








WOOOOfr.WWJK' 



ill At • • Ai a 





1 




■ «♦. * 


■Ti 


►i'.'»»5 


/'•'<> 


V 


^ 

i' 




• >> 


$ 


M 


*A%f 


*^ 


.*i 


A"»iWA 









11 .!»•*< W.O 



TTgopDTOCappTJiJXXX 





1? 


1 Vj SjS. J c 




i 


fi^§w 






•Vi 




••V 


Sfl ic 




Ifiias 






^^ 





■ r'.'/i'.'i.. '.:-. .-:.^q»»-'Mif« P"'*"'^""'^' '--^ 




Everyday Life in 
The Old Stone Age 




Fig. I. — Magdalenian Painting. 



Everyday Life in 
The Old Stone Age 

Written and Illustrated by 

Marjorie and C. H. B* Quennell 

Authors of "Everyday Things in England'* 




G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 
Zbc Iftntcfterbocfter iptess 

1922 






Copyright, 1923 

by 
Marjorie Quennell 

and 
C. H. B. Quennell 



Made in the United States of America 



>??H 




LA674220 



TO 

E. R. Q. 

& 

H. Q. 




"The Masquerader** 
byP. C. Q, 



INTRODUCTION 

This little book has come into being as a result of 
another that we wrote, and illustrated, between 
1915 and 1919. It was intended for the younger 
readers, and we called it a History of Everyday 
Things in England, An attempt was made to 
draw the eyes of our readers away from the De- 
struction which was to the fore in those days, and 
to present instead a picture of all the care and 
trouble which had gone to the Construction of the 
everyday things that were being destroyed. We 
gave the matter very careful consideration, and it 
seemed to us essential that the things illustrated 
should be of a type with which our readers would 
be familiar. Some of my readers will have had an 
opportunity of seeing the Norman work at Norwich 
or Castle Rising, or the Renaissance work of Inigo 
Jones at Raynham. With some reluctance we 
made no mention of any earlier work. The doings 
of Roman, Saxon, and Dane were only hinted at, 

vu 



Introduction 

and the prehistoric period was not mentioned at 
aU. We started with William the Conqueror, and 
finished at the end of the eighteenth century. 

Since we appear to have interested many of the 
younger readers, we now^ want to fill in the long 
space before 1066. One is so apt to lump together 
all the earlier work, and think of it as having been 
done in a few centuries; the sense of perspective is 
lost. History is rather like travelling on the rail- 
way, the events flash past like telegraph posts, the 
nearer ones having their due spaces in between; but 
if we look back, the events, like the posts, are all 
bunched together and we cannot realize the spaces. 

These spaces are as important as the events of 
History, and represent the periods when people 
were making up their minds; recovering perhaps 
from great disasters, or gathering their forces to go 
forward. 

The races of mankind, like their works, develop 
by growth to flower and decay, but always there is 
a rebirth or renaissance. The Magdalenian Art 
we illustrate, died out in Azilian times, yet still 
lives to inspire us. If History is divided into 
events and spaces, then the people are divided into 
those who have ideas, and want to do and make 

viii 



Introduction 

things, and the others who only deal in the ideas, 
and benefit by these. 

We hold that History is not just dates, but a 
long tale of man's life, labour, and achievements; 
and if this be so, we cannot afford to neglect the 
doings of prehistoric men, who, with flint for their 
material, made all the implements and weapons 
they needed for their everyday life. 

Here is an illustration of what we mean. Wil- 
liam of Malmesbury wrote in the tweffth century, 
of a monk of the monastery, Elmer by name, who 
made a flying machine and flew "for more than 
the distance of a furlong; but, agitated by the vio- 
lence of the wind and the current of air, as well as 
by the consciousness of his rash attempt, he fell and 
broke his legs, and was lame ever after. He used 
to relate as the cause of his failure, his forgetting 
to provide himself a tail." Elmer was lamed be- 
cause, being a pioneer, he lacked any history to go 
on; he did not leave any design behind him, but 
think how interesting it would have been had he 
done so. The twelfth century is hardly prehistoric, 
but sufficiently so to emphasize the principle, that 
there is something to be found out from work well 
done in any period. 

is 



Introduction 

To describe the everyday life of prehistoric man 
is difficult, because there is not any history to go 
on. This is why we talk about these times as pre- 
historic. For any period after the Roman occu- 
pation we have the actual written word to depend 
upon; even before that, in 330 B.C., Pytheas of 
Marseilles sailed to Britain, and said the climate 
was foggy and damp, and the people raised quanti- 
ties of corn. In the prehistoric period we have 
only the everyday things, and the physical charac- 
teristics of the earth itself; so the pick and shovel 
become more useful than the pen, and men dig for 
the information they need. 

We call the pick and shovel historian an Arch- 
aeologist, from the Greek archaios, ancient, and 
logos, discourse. The archaeologist is helped by 
the astronomers and mathematicians, who are 
called in to decide in matter of climatic change like 
the Glacial Periods. A skull is found, like the one 
at Piltdown in Sussex, and the anatomists examine 
it carefully to fit it into its place as a link in the 
chain of man's development. The science of man 
and mankind is called Anthropology, from an- 
thropos, a man, and logos, discourse. The science 
of life is Biology. Flint implements are found, 



Introduction 

are being found now by Mr. Reid Moir, under a 
bed which dates from Pliocene times. The geolog- 
ists are called in, and the great problem is de- 
bated, whether man could have lived on the 
earth in this period. So one must know something 
of geology which is the science that deals with the 
structure of the earth. 

A tremendous amount of work has been done in 
— what is from the historical point of view — a very 
short time. We give references in the text which 
show how very recent a growth is Archaeology. 
If our readers are interested in this plan they can 
themselves raise a superstructure of more advanced 
knowledge, and to this end our authorities are 
named in this Introduction. We do not lay claim 
to any great store of archaeological knowledge our- 
selves, and have approached our task rather as 
illustrators. As painter and architect, who have 
been making things ourselves all our lives, we may 
perhaps be able to treat of the work of prehistoric 
man in a sympathetic fashion, and hope our pic- 
tures will help our readers to see these old people 
a little. 

This brings up the question of how we are to ap- 
proach prehistoric man. We must free our minds 

xi 



Introduction 

of prejudice. Some people will say that he was 
a repulsive creature, incredibly dirty and unpleas- 
ant. Obviously this could not have been the case 
with the Magdalenians, whose work we see on p. 
177. There will be other people who will regard 
our friend as the Noble Savage, and clothe him in 
their minds with all the simple virtues. It will 
not do to jump to conclusions. Shall we judge him 
by his WORK? If we try to find out how he 
lived, the tools he used, and the things that he 
made with them, then in the end we shall have a 
picture in our own minds. This is the essential 
part of reading a book, that it should help us to 
form our own conclusions. So we do not seek to 
teach, nor do we wish to preach, but we do want 
to interest our readers, and here we give you fair 
warning. If we can do so; if this subtle little 
microbe can work its way into your system, and 
you begin to grub about, and want to find out how 
things were made and done, then for the rest of 
your long lives the itching little worry will con- 
demn you to go on grubbing, and you will become 
archaeologists yourselves. 

We should like to thank our Publishers for the 
trouble they have taken in publishing; Mr. Regi- 

xii 



Introduction 

nald Smith and Mr. O. G. S. Crawford for kindly 
advice; Mr. Reid Moir for permission to include 
our drawing of his theory of flint flaking; and our 
very special thanks are due to Professor H. J. 
Fleure and Dr. A. C. Haddon, who not only read 
through our MS. and proofs with the greatest care, 
but as well made many suggestions which we feel 
have added to the value of the book. We are in- 
debted to our friend Mr. Harold Falkner for in- 
formation as to Farnham flints, and M. Forestier 
and Mr. Cox, of the London Library, for 
suggestions as to authorities. 

Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell. 



Berkhaaipsted, Herts, 
September, 1921. 



Xlll 



SHORT LIST OF AUTHORITIES 



TITLE OF BOOK 

The Ajitiquity of Man 

in Europe 
The Age of the Earth 
The Antiquity of Man 

Ancient Britain 

Ancient Hunters 

Man the Primeval Sav- 
age 

Man of the Old Stone 
Age 

La Caverne df Alt amir a 

Pre-'palcpolithic Man 
Rostro-carinate Flint 
Implements 



Man and his Past. 

Science from an Easy 

Chair 
Guide to the Stone Age 
Guide to Fossil Mam- 
mals and Birds 

Guide to Elephants 
{Recent and Fossil) 



AUTHOR 

James Geikie 
W. J. Sollas 
Arthur Keith 

T. Rice Holmes 
W. J. Sollas 

Worthington G. Smith 

H. F. Osborn 

Emile Cartailhac et 
I'abbe Henri Breuil 
J. Reid Moir 

E. Ray Lankester 
0. G. S. Crawford 



E. Ray Lankester 
British Museum 

Natural History 
Museum. 

Natural History 
Museum 



PUBLISHER 

Oliver & Boyd, 1914 

Williams & Norgate, 

1920 
Clarendon Press, 1907 
Macmillan, 1915 

Stanford, 1894 

Charles Scribner's 
Sons, 1918 

Imprimerie de Mona- 
co, 1906 

Harrison, 1919 

Proceedings of the 
Royal Society, vol. 
xci. 

Oxford University 
Press, 1921 

Methuen, 1912 
1911 



1909 



1908 



XV 



Short List of i\uthorities 



TITLE OF BOOK 



AUTHOR 



Guide to Fossil Re- 
mains of Man Natural History 

Museum 
Manuel d' ArchSologie Dechelette 

The Gravel Beds of 
Farnham Henry Bury 



Prehistory M. C. Burkitt 

The Childhood of Art H. G. Spearing 



Naturalist's Voyage in 

H.M.S. Beagle 
The Native Tribes of 

Central Australia 
The Northern Tribes of 

Central Australia 
The Aborigines of 

Victoria 
The Aborigines of 

Tasmania 
The Central Eskimo 



Eskimo Life 



Charles Darwin 
Spencer and Gillen 
Spencer and Gillen 
R. Brough Smyth 



PUBLISHER 



1918 

Librairie Alphonse 
Picard et fils 

Proceedings of the 
Geologists' Associa- 
tion, vol. xxiv. Part 
4. 1913 

Cambridge University 
Press, 1921 

Kegan Paul, Trench, 
Triibner & Co., 
1912 

J. M. Dent & Sons 

Macmillan, 1899 

Macmillan, 1904 

Trubner & Co., 1878 

F. King & Sons, 1899 



H. Ling Roth 

Dr. Frank Boas, in Qth 
Annual Report of 

the Bureau of Washington Govern- 

Ethnology, 1884-5 ment Printing Office 

Fridtjof Nansen Longmans, Green & 

Co., 1893 



Handbook to Ethno- 
graphical Collections British Museum 



1910 



XVI 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE A B C OF ARCHEOLOGY ... 3 

Sedimentary Strata — Stratified Rocks — The Earth's 
Orbit — Precession of the Equinoxes — Glaciers — Mo- 
raines — Glacial Periods — River Terraces — Loess — 
Flint Implements — Caddington. 



II. THE STREPYAN, CHELLEAN, AND 
ACHEULEAN MEN OF THE OLD STONE 

AGE 35 

Darwin — Pithecanthropus — Rostro-carinates — Piltdown 
Man — Cephalic Index — Flint Implements — Sabre- 
toothed Tiger — Pitfall — " Came con cuero'' — Galley 
Hill Man — River Camps — Travelling — Scrapers — Trap- 
ping — Break-wind — Decorations — Mammoth — Rhi- 
noceros — Spears — Tasmanians — Rafts and Canoes — Grass 
Rope — Chellean and Acheulean Life. 

III. THE CAVE-DWELLERS .... 92 

Neanderthaler — Mousterian Figure — Barter — Bolas — 
Spear-throwing and Spear-throwers — Huts — Fishing — 
Grinding — Totemism — Canoes — Initiation — Mousterian 
Life — Magic. 

xvii 



Contents 



CHAPTER PAGE 

IV. ARTISTS OF THE OLD STONE AGE . 125 

Aurignacian Man — Combe Capelle Man — Grimaldi Man 
— Huts — Spokesha ve — Shaft-straightening — Reindeer — 
Bow-drill — Artists — Irish Deer — Altamira — Aurignacian 
Drawing — Mutilation — Dancing — Wolf's Fang — Solu- 
trean Man — Bone Needles — Chancelade Man — Harpoons 
— Spears — Eskimo — Kayak — Bladder Darts — Games — 
Huts — Tents — Digging Sticks — Magdalenian Painting 
and Engraving — Daggers — Magdalenian Life. 



V. THE END OF THE OLD STONE AGE . 182 

Ofnet Men — A B C — Painted Stones — Dug-outs — Rafts 
INDEX 199 



XVlll 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FIG. PAGE 

1. Magdalenian Painting . Frontispiece 

2. Rostro-carinate or Eagle-beak Flint Im- 

plement ...... 



3. Section Across Wales and England 

4. Causes of the Ice Ages 

5. Glaciers and Moraines 

6. The Formation of River Terraces 

7. The Farnham Terraces 

8. Pithecanthropus, the Sub-man of Java 

9. A Theory of Flint Flaking 

10. Eoanthropus Dawsoni, the Piltdown Man 

11. The Piltdown Man's Bone Implement 

12. Piltdown Man Making Flint Implement 

13. Making Fire ..... 

14. Strepyan Boucher or Hand-axe 

15. Machcerodus, the Sabre-toothed Tiger 

16. The Pitfall ..... 

xix 



9 
9 
9 
15 
19 
19 
19 
39 
39 
45 
51 
45 
45 
45 
55 



Illustrations 



PIG. 

17. 
18. 
19. 

20. 
21. 
22. 
23. 
24. 
25. 

26. 
27. 
28. 
29. 
30. 
31. 
32. 
33. 
34. 
35. 
36. 
37. 



Galley Hill Man 

Chellean Boucher or Hand-axe 

Oval Implement .... 

Chellean Scraper 

Falling Spear .... 

A Break-wind .... 

An Acheulean Boucher or Hand-axe 

Elephas primigenius, the Mammoth 

Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the Wooly-coated 
Rhinoceros 

Tasmanian Spear 

A Bark Raft 

Making Grass Rope , 

Mousterian Cave-dwellers 

Neanderthaler or Mousterian 

Poise of the Mousterian Figure 

Mousterians on the March 

Mousterian Spear-head 

Australian Spear-throwing 

Hafting ..... 
Australian Hut .... 



PAGE 

59 
55 
59 
63 
63 
63 
71 
71 

71 
71 
79 
87 
93 
87 
87 
97 
87 

103 

103 
107 



XX 



Illustrations 



FIG. 






PAGE 


38. 


Making Fire ..... 




103 


39. 


A Bark Canoe ..... 




111 


40. 


A Primitive Spindle .... 




103 


41. 


The Cro-Magnon Man 




127 


42. 


Combe Capelle Man .... 




127 


43. 


Grimaldi Man ..... 




127 


44. 


Type of Huts Suggested by Aurignacian 






Drawings ..... 




131 


45. 


The Spokeshave .... 




127 


46. 


Shaft-straightening .... 




135 


47. 


The Bow-drill ..... 




135 


48. 


Cervus giganteus, the Irish Deer . 




135 


49. 


Aurignacian Drawing 




139 


50. 


Perforated Wolf's Fang, from Ivinghoe 






Beacon ...... 




145 


51. 


Solutrean Flints .... 




145 


52. 


Making of Bone Needles . 




149 


53. 


Chancelade Man .... 




145 


54. 


Spears and Harpoons 




155 


55. 


The TCayak ..... 




159 


56. 


Framework of Kayak 




155 


57. 


Eskimo Bladder Dart, Harpoon and 
Dart ...... 


Bird 


155 



XXI 



Illustrations 

FIG. PAGE 

58. Eskimo Game ...... 155 

59. ) Type of Huts Suggested by Magdalenian 

QQ \ Drawings ...... 167 

61. Eskimo Summer Tent ..... 167 

62. Digging-stick . . . 171 

63. Magdalenian Cave Painting . . .175 

64. Grazing Reindeer, Engraved on a Round 

Bone ....... 171 

65. Deer Crossing a Stream, Engraved on a 

Round Bone ...... 171 

66. Magdalenian Carved Ivory Dagger . .183 

67. Magdalenian Carved Ivory Harpoon 

Thrower ....... 183 

68. Round-headed Ofnet Man . . .183 

69. Long-headed Ofnet Man .... 183 

70. AziLiAN Painted Stones . . . . 183 



xxu 



EVERYDAY LIFE 

IN 

THE OLD STONE AGE 



EVERYDAY LIFE IN 
THE OLD STONE AGE 

CHAPTER I 

THE A B C OF ARCHEOLOGY 

We said in our Introduction that the archaeologist 
is a pick and shovel historian. He investigates 
the lives of the ancient peoples, by the remains 
which they have left behind them; he needs must 
dig for his information, because the very earliest 
times are prehistoric, and no written word remains. 
To dig is to find out how the earth's crust is built 
up, and we must have some knowledge of its struc- 
ture, if we are to understand the many evidences 
of life that we shall find. Geology, or the science 
of the earth, is of very recent growth. It w^as 
during the Renaissance, in the sixteenth century, 
that men first began to understand the meaning of 
fossils. In this, as in so many other things, Leon- 
ardo da Vinci, the great Italian painter (1452-1519) 
was a pioneer. 

3 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

Here in England, it was largely due to William 
Smith, who was born, on the 23d of March, 1769, 
at Churchill, in Oxfordshire, that we now under- 
stand the way the stratified rocks of the earth are 
built up layer by layer. Steno, a Dane, who was a 
professor at Padua, had originated this idea, and 
published a book on the subject in 1669, but it was 
left to William Smith to work out the detail in this 
country. His father was a small farmer, and 
William had little schooling, yet by his observation 
of the countryside, by the time he was twenty-two 
he had constructed a system of geology; and re- 
member there was no system before. When he 
was eighteen he had been apprenticed to a land 
surveyor, and later worked on the canals which 
were being cut through the countryside during the 
end of the eighteenth century. This work, of 
course, afforded him a splendid opportunity for 
observing the formation of the earth's crust. So, 
very largely as a result of Smith's work, we now 
know that the earth is built up of a series of sedi- 
mentary strata, and that these are in reality the 
sediment which has been deposited on the beds of 
old seas or lakes. These vary in thickness and 
position, in various parts of the world, but in all 

4 



The A B C of Archaeology 

parts they are in the same relative position one to 
the other. The earth is rather hke an orange, with 
many skins of different colours, thicknesses, and 
materials; here and there a rude thumb has been 
inserted, and one or more skins torn out, but on 
each side of the gap, beyond the damage, we find 
the skins; rivers and seas may fill the gap, or the 
skins be distorted by blisters, or crinkled into 
mountains, but the principle of stratification 
remains. 

Professor Sollas in his book. The Age of the Earth, 
has an interesting chapter on William Smith, and 
tells how he conceived the idea of representing the 
results of his work in a geological map. "Alone 
and single-handed he determined to accomplish in 
outline that which the organized efforts of H. M. 
Geological Survey, extended over half a century, 
have not yet completed in detail; and he succeeded 
in his task." William Smith has a further claim 
to our attention, because he discovered that not 
only were the fossils in the various strata the re- 
mains of living organisms, but that each stratum 
had its own peculiar fossils which were typical of 
the bed in which they were deposited, and the time 
when they were laid down, and that in all parts of 

5 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

the world they succeed each other in the same rela- 
tive order. In classical times it had been thought 
that animal life could generate itself in the mud and 
slime of rivers and lakes, and fossils were regarded as 
specimens which had been left behind, or not proper- 
ly developed, and so had been petrified into stone. 

Geologists adopted and developed Smith's ideas, 
and by the discovery of the same kinds of fossils, 
in similar rocks in different parts of the world, 
began to be able to date them. In doing this they 
were attacked by their brother scientists who con- 
demned this idea, pointing out that life must start 
at some definite point, and spread from this centre 
to other parts of the world. For the ordinary man, 
it seems sufiicient to suppose that if you find the 
same kind of fossil in the limestones of America and 
England, and find the limestone itself in the same 
relative position to the other strata, then if the two 
are not twin brothers they must be most nearly 
related. The modern scientist can find out by 
observation how long the delta of a river, or any 
other form of sediment, takes to accumulate. In 
this way they form a scale by which they can also 
estimate the age of the older deposits. 

To revert to our strata: The Chart opposite 

6 



CLIMATfLEMENTS. 



ce of to-day 
ill iron 
\, bronze 

'The moist climate allof nt and introduction 

forest across the mii-^ stone 

1 _ f 

flint — rise of bone 

Climate gradually beco| 
occasional returns ci~~ 



' -like lance-heads 



Post-Glacial Period ; <^ 



urth Glacial Period ^^^ 



ird Interglacial Period f^^^> scrapers 
•'.rd Glacial Period 
ond Interglacial Perio^ 
ond Glacial Period i 



St Interglacial Period \^ 
St Glacial Period 



mperate 

b-tropical ! 

opical 

mperate ' 

igland an archipelago- 
the present mountains 
chalk was being built uj 
shells of minute creatu^ 



any stick or stone 
^ to hand 



Aungnacian, 5 



c« 



H 



13 



12 



A SCALE (; 



2 Thousand 
Years 




A SCALE OF TIME 



The A B C of Archaeology 

shows the Geological Periods and the stratified 
rocks. These latter are shown in the order in which 
they were deposited, starting from the bottom up- 
wards. To illustrate this more fully, we give a 
section across Wales and England (Fig. 3). We 
have Snowdon in the west at A. Its base at 1 is 
built on Pre-Cambrian, Cambrian, and Ordovician 
rocks, and there is an outcrop of these more to the 
east. Eruptive rocks appear at 3, and the Silurian 
at 4. The Devonian at 5, and at 6 the Gneiss at 
Malvern. All this west part of England has been 
disturbed, and the many skins or strata of the earth 
distorted by enormous physical disturbances. At 
B are the Malverns, and here there is a fault or 
break in the stratum, but as we go east the geologi- 
cal conditions become easier to understand; 8 and 9 
are Red Marl or Triassic; 10 the Lias. At C w^e 
have the Cotswold Hills composed of the Oolites, 
11; the Lias and Oolites are Jurassic. This is over- 
laid by the Greensand at 12, and the Chalk of the 
Chiltern Hills at 13; these are Cretaceous. Then 
we have the Eocene beds at 14. 

We shall not be very concerned with the primary 
rocks in our study of prehistoric life, but shall soon 
come across references to those of the Mesozoic, or 

7 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

Secondary Period. Here we find the Cretaceous, 
or chalk beds, and it was in these that primitive 
man in Britain dug for the flints he needed to make 
his implements. 

Perhaps the next of our diflSculties will be the 
constant reference which is made by the archaeolo- 
gists to the Ice Ages, and times when the climate of 
England was much colder than it is now; when we 
had glaciers here, and the North Sea was a solid 
mass of ice uniting Scandinavia with East Anglia. 
There are many theories as to how this came about. 

We all know that the earth revolves round the 
sun on a path which is called its orbit. It completes 
the circle in a year, and turns on its own axis in so 
doing once a day, or 365 times in the year. As the 
earth turns round on its axis, the part which is 
toward the sun enjoys daylight, and in the part 
which is away, the people sleep because it is the 
night. 

It is quite a good plan to make a rough working 
model of all this on the dining-room table, as Fig. 4, 
and if the family possesses a globe it will help. If 
not, let an orange take the place of the earth, and 
drive a knitting-needle through it for the axis. 
You can eat the Earth afterwards. A candle in the 

8 




Fig. 2. — Rostro-carinate or Eagle-beak Flint Implement. 



3.1 4 



B % loC „ 12 D ^ 




I ' — - a 

Fig. 3. — Section across Wales and England. 



1 A* 








^ 5 

Fig. 4. — Causes of the Ice Ages. 



The A B C of Archaeology 

middle of the table can be the sun. If the table is 
circular, the edge can be the earth's orbit; if not 
we can draw one in chalk. If on this path, the 
knitting-needle is placed in a vertical position, so 
that the equator of the orange, or earth, is level 
with the candle, or sun, then it can be seen that the 
equator will derive more light from the candle than 
the top and bottom where the knitting-needle 
comes through. So we discover in the case of the 
earth, that the equator is hotter than the polar 
caps, because it gets more sunshine. If we move 
the orange round the orbit, turning it as we go, but 
keeping the knitting-needle upright, we arrive at 
day and night, heat and cold, but not summer and 
winter, or why, when we have summer, Australia 
has winter; but let the knitting-needle lean over, 
and we have an entirely different state of affairs. 
This is what has happened, and to-day the angle 
of inclination of the equator to the orbit of the 
earth is 23° 27'. Our diagram (Fig. 4) shows how 
this affects the seasons. 

The Vernal Equinox of 21st March is shown at 
position 1, when day and night are equal. At the 
Summer Solstice on 21st June, position 2, all the 
North Hemisphere will be turned towards the sun, 

11 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

and we get the longest days. At the Autumnal 
Equinox, 23d September, position 3, day and night 
are again equal. The Winter Solstice, position 4, 
comes on 21st December with the shortest day, and 
the Northern Hemisphere leans away from the sun 
and warmth. 

The scientists tell us that this inclination of the 
equator to the earth's orbit, through long ages, 
varies from 22° 6' to 24° 50'. The former would 
give us less difference between winter and summer 
than we have now, the latter would increase the 
difference. The shape of the earth's orbit changes, 
and sometimes is roughly elliptical, with the sun 
much nearer to one end than the other. This 
would mean short summers and long cold winters. 

There is what is called the Precession of the 
Equinoxes; the earth wobbles as it spins, and this 
further affects the inclination of the axis. The Gulf 
Stream gives us now a better climate than our 
latitude entitles us to. When we bear in mind 
that the scientists tell us that a very small fall in 
the temperature would bring back the snow and 
ice, then it is easy to see how a combination of the 
conditions we have mentioned may have caused 
the Ice Ages. 



The A B C of Archaeology 

There is no need for alarm, and we need not rush 
off to buy skates in preparation for the next Ice 
Age. Thousands of years pass as the earth slowly 
wobbles on its journey. If we refer to the Chart, 
we shall see how all through Pliocene times weather 
conditions became colder, and culminated in the 
first Ice Age — then came a more genial time which 
the scientists call the First Interglacial Period, 
because they have arrived at the conclusion that 
there were four glacial periods, with three inter- 
glacial periods in between, and a post-glacial one 
after the fourth glacial period. We may be living 
in an interglacial period now. 

The next of our difficulties may be the constant 
reference which the archaeologist makes to the 
action of Glaciers; to large surfaces of land being 
denuded and deposited elsewhere, and to a period 
which is referred to as that of the River Drift. We 
will start with the Glaciers. 

A glacier is a very slowly moving river of ice. 
Gathering its forces from the snowfields on the 
summits of the mountains, it moves by gravity 
down the valleys, and collects tributaries as it goes 
along. In doing this the snow solidifies into ice, 
and it is quite easy to see that a tremendous pres- 

13 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

sure must be exercised on the sides of the valleys. 
If we go into a mountainous region, which during 
the Ice Age had glaciers, we shall find plenty of 
evidence of their existence. The sides of the valleys 
have been worn smooth by the slowly moving mass 
of ice grinding into the rocks (roches moutonnees), 
there will also be piles of splintered rocks which are 
called moraines. The intense cold causes the rocks 
above the valley to crack and splinter, and frag- 
ments fall, and are left as embankments at the 
sides, or rolling on to the ice are carried along. 
These are called lateral moraines (1 , Fig. 5) . Where 
two glaciers join, these meet, and flowing down 
the middle of the lower glaciers are called medial 
moraines (2, Fig. 5). In this way glaciers trans- 
port materials for long distances. The debris of 
the lateral moraines falls into crevasses, or cracks 
in the ice, and appears lower down in the terminal 
moraines. 

The glacier moving downhill, comes to a place 
where the temperature is warmer, and the ice melts. 
Here we find what is called a terminal moraine or 
moraine girdle (3, Fig. 5). These are generally 
fan-shaped, and represent the heap of broken rock 
and stone, which has been pushed forward under 

14 




Fig. 5. — Glaciers and Moraines. 



The A B C of Archaeology 

the nose of the glacier, and gathered up by it in its 
progress from the bed and sides of the valleys. 
The existence of old moraine girdles, which have 
become covered with soil and trees, and now look 
like hills, is a proof of ice conditions in former times. 
There are girdle moraines as far west as Lyons in 
France, which prove that the Swiss glaciers were 
once of enormous length. High up on the sides of 
valleys, the roches moutonnees show that the glaciers 
were once very much deeper. All those facts help 
the scientists in their conclusions as to the dura- 
tion of the Ice Ages, and the temperature general 
then. 

Behind a moraine girdle, in the bed of the old 
glacier, we find a sort of enormous basin, filled with 
hummocks of boulder clay, called drumlins, at 4. 
To make this apparent the ice of the glacier has 
been broken away at 5. This clay is the mud 
which was brought down by the glacier, and was 
formed by the churning action of its underside on 
the rocks over which it passed. 

Below the moraine girdle, we find what the Ger- 
mans call Schotter fields. It is here, where the ice 
melts, that the river comes into being, carrying 
away the smaller pieces of rock, depositing them 

17 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

first in the schotter, then breaking and roUing the 
pieces until lower down we find them in the gravel 
formations of the river terraces. Our readers, 
perhaps, will know a river whose banks descend 
in terraced steps; it is a very usual formation. 
This connection between the glaciers, their girdle 
moraines, and river terraces is very important, 
because by their aid great men, like Professors 
Geikie and Penck, have worked out the theory of 
the Glacial Periods. 

Professor Penck studied the river Steyr in Upper 
Austria, and found that each of its terraces con- 
nected up with the girdle moraine of an ancient 
glacier, and from this the following theory of the 
formation of terraces themselves has been evolved. 
Diagram Fig. 6 has been prepared to illustrate this. 

We must bear in mind that before what we now call 
glacial times there had been other cold periods, and 
earlier river systems. Some great climatic changes 
must have been responsible for the extinction of 
great reptiles like the Dinosaurs, who, being large 
bodied and small brained, could not adapt them- 
selves to change. The Ice Ages played their part 
in man's development; he learned to suit himself 
to new conditions and surroundings. 

18 




Fig. 6. — The Formation of River Terraces. 




Fig. 7. — The Farnham Terraces, 




Fig. 8. — Pithecanthropus, the Sub-man of Java. 



i 



The A B C of Archaeology 

Bed A in diagram Fig. 6 would be preglacial. 
In the First Glacial Period, at the end of Pliocene 
times, the volume of water in the rivers would not 
have been large, because so much was locked up 
in the ice of the glaciers. 

Then came the warmer weather of the First 
Interglacial Period, when vast quantities of water 
were melted out of the glaciers, and hurrying down 
the old river bed, or forming another, cut anew 
channel to B. As the water lost its power to cut 
channels it began to build up the bed of gravel at C. 

Then the Second Glacial Period came on, and the 
river again shrank in size. At the Second Inter- 
glacial Period the bed was cut down to D, and the 
bed of gravel at E built up gradually afterwards. 
The channel was cut down to F in Third Inter- 
glacial times, and bed G formed, and the final 
channel H cut in the warmer times after the Fourth 
Glacial Period, which we call post-glacial. An 
ingenious method has been applied to form an 
estimate of the time which has elapsed since the 
last Ice Age. As the glaciers retreated, during 
each summer mud was melted out of them and 
deposited in the form of clay; a band each year. 
In Sweden this is called banded clay, and in that 

21 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

country Baron de Geer has counted all the bands, 
and so formed an estimate of time. 

To revert to the theory of how the terraces 1, 2, 
and 3 were formed, we have shown the gravels of 
which they are composed by a dotted surface, and 
it will be seen that they are in reality the edges of 
the old river-beds, which have been left behind as 
the water cut its way down. Our readers may 
think this sounds very ingenious, but demand some 
other proof, that all the terraces were not formed 
in one interglacial period. 

This is supplied by the flint implements of vary- 
ing design, and the fossil remains of animals of 
widely diflPerent periods, which have been found in 
the gravel formations of river terraces in many 
parts of the world. This is the period of the River 
Drift. 

Our drawing (Fig. 6) can be taken as showing 
the terraces of the Somme at S. Acheul. The 
Somme is celebrated, because here it was, at Abbe- 
ville, that M. Boucher de Perthes discovered large 
quantities of flint implements in the gravel de- 
posits, in the middle of the nineteenth century. 
As early as the end of the seventh century, a fine 
pear-shaped flint implement, which is now in the 

22 



The x^ B C of Archaeology 

British Museum, had been found near Gray's Inn 
Lane, London. Mr. John Frere discovered others 
at Hoxne, Suffolk, in 1797, and reahzed that those 
tools belonged "to a very remote period indeed, 
and to a people who had not the use of metals." 

So that just as the fossils led the geologists to 
the theory of the stratification of the rocks and 
enabled the various layers to be dated, the flint 
implements and fossil remains of animals in the ter- 
races suggested the idea that these had been formed 
at different times. The additional fact that the 
terraces of the Somme, Thames, and the Wey at 
Farnham, are much alike in general formation, 
and that in them are found flint implements which 
are of the same pattern, suggests that people of 
the same state of civilization once lived on their 
banks. 

It will perhaps be as well for us now to run 
through the implements found in the terraces of 
the Somme, because it will familiarize our readers 
with the recognized French names for the various 
divisions of the Old Stone Age. We have no cor- 
responding English names, so the French ones have 
been very generally adopted. 

No implements have been found in the upi>er 

S3 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

plateau No. 4, which leads us to suppose that man 
did not live on the banks of the Somme before the 
First Glacial Period. In the next terrace down- 
wards, No. 3, Strepyan implements are found. 
We shall explain what these are later; meanwhile, 
how did they get there .^^ We have imagined a 
mighty river rushing down in flood at the beginning 
of the First Interglacial period, when the tremen- 
dous glaciers began to shrink and melt away, and 
this would be quite a different matter to the wast- 
age only, which went on during glacial times. This 
flood of water is not an exaggeration. Remember 
that we are writing about periods which extended 
over, not hundreds, but thousands of years; as well 
that we are living in an interglacial period now. 
In September, 1920, a warm spell of a few days 
accompanied by rain after a rather cold summer, 
caused a serious situation at Chamonix in Switzer- 
land. The papers said a glacier had "burst." 
W^hat really happened was that the rise in temper- 
ature caused the Mont An vers Glacier to melt more 
rapidly than its accustomed rate of wastage. Masses 
of ice broke away, and were swept with stone and 
mud into the valley. Rivers rose, trees were uproot- 
ed, and houses carried away. Now think of the 

24 



The A B C of Archaeology 

whole of the north of Europe under an ice-cap, and 
the Swiss glaciers extending as far west as Lyons in 
France, and the temperature gradually becoming 
warmer. The scientists tell us that it only wants 
a fall of about 5° centigrade below the mean annual 
temperature of Europe to have all the rigour of the 
glacial periods back again, or that a rise of 4° to 5° 
would cause all the Swiss glaciers to disappear. 
So that one week rather warmer than usual in the 
First Interglacial period would have wrought tre- 
mendous damage. The new river-bed would have 
been torn out to level B, and the first layer of gravel 
formed by the grinding up of the rocks and flints 
deposited at C. Then perhaps the winter came 
on or dryer weather. The river shrank, and Strep- 
yan man came down to the water's edge, he wanted 
to fish or drink; he may have camped there. In 
any case he left his tools behind and these were 
made of flint, and some are found to-day nearly as 
sharp and perfect as when he used them, neither 
rolled, nor abraded. The river rose again, and 
bringing down more gravel covered up the tools; 
sometimes it carried an implement along, and 
bruising it very considerably in so doing deposited 
it lower down the river. 

25 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

In the second terrace (2) are found a few Strepyan 
tools in the underlying gravels. These may have 
washed down when the bed E was being formed in 
Second Interglacial times, because as the bed C 
over it was being undeimined, the Strepyan im- 
plements in it may have slid down into the new 
gravels which were being formed under it. On 
these gravels sands were deposited, and in these 
early Chellean implements are found. So man 
again, during all the long years of the Second Inter- 
glacial period, lived on the water's edge of the 
Somme, and left his tools behind him to be 
covered up by the gravel deposited in flood times 
when he had to retreat up to the higher terraces. 
In the gravels of this terrace are found remains of 
E, antiquus, a southern type of elephant which 
preceded the mammoth. This shows us that the 
climate was warm. 

In the gravels of the first terrace are found later 
Chellean implements, and the final gravel bed has 
not been explored because it is frequently sub- 
merged. 

It should be noted that disturbances of the level 
of the earth's surface, in relation to the level of the 
sea, may have contributed to the formation of river 

26 



The A B C of Archaeology 

terraces. For instance, well below the bed of the 
Thames is an old buried channel, in which the 
river ran, where the land was higher. Any raising 
of the land's surface would make the river run 
more rapidly on its way to the sea, and so have 
more power to cut its way dowii, and form terraces, 
or it may have been that the Ice Age locked up 
tremendous quantities of water, and thus lowered 
the sea-level. Since Neolithic times there has 
been little change in the earth's surface. 

Fig. 7 shows the terraces of the River Wey at 
Farnham, Surrey, and we include this because it is 
nearer home than the Somme, also nearly all the 
flint implements illustrated in this book have been 
drawn from specimens found at Farnham. The 
gravel beds are shown by solid blacks. At A no 
implements have been found, so this may have been 
the bed of an enormous river of preglacial times 
which extended as the dotted line right across the 
country to Hindhead. The next river formation 
was on the line B, and of this there are gravel 
beds remaining on three ridges, valleys between 
having been cut since to C. D and E show 
rivers which were gradually shrinking to pigmy 
dimensions. 

27 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

It is quite easy to see that such tremendous 
rivers could not have existed as part of our present 
river system. These old rivers were ambitious 
pushing fellows wanting more elbow-room, and 
this they had. The Thames at London stretched 
five miles wide between Highbury and Clapham. 
Europe in Pleistocene times had a different shape, 
and was a bigger place than it is now, and raised 
higher above the sea-level. The Atlantic was per- 
haps one hundred miles more to the west: the 
Mediterranean consisted of two inland seas. 

The Irish Sea, English Channel, and North Sea 
were wide valleys feeding noble rivers. One, 
which we will call the River of the Men of Galley 
Hill, had for its tributaries the Thames, Rhine, 
and Elbe, and it discharged its waters into a north- 
ern sea just south of the Faroe Isles. Another, 
which we will call the River of the Men of S. 
Acheul, had for its tributaries the Seine, Somme, 
and all our southern rivers, and flowed westward 
to the Atlantic through the fertile lands of what is 
now the English Channel. England during some 
parts of the glacial periods was connected to Eu- 
rope by a watershed of dry land where the Straits 
of Dover now are. There was an isthmus across 

^8 



The A B C of Archaeology 

the Mediterranean at Gibraltar, and another south 
of Sicily. These trackways are very important 
because by them the Arctic animals could come 
south when it was cold here, and the southern 
animals come north when it was warm. This is 
the explanation of the hippopotamus in England: 
he did not need to swim, and was not cut out for 
flying; he walked here. In Aurignacian times the 
Sahara, till then a pleasant grassland, became a 
desert, and this led to the migration of men and 
animals. 

Before we leave the question of rivers and their 
terraces, we must refer back to Fig. 6. On the 
upper drawing of the river the gravel of the ter- 
races, which is shown dotted, is overlain by depos- 
its which are shown by hatched lines. 

These deposits are in the nature of Loess, or 
loam, brick-earth and soil washed down by rain, 
and have been a great puzzle to the geologists. At 
one time it was thought that great lakes were 
formed during the temperate periods between the 
Ice Ages, and that the deposits were made by the 
settling of the boulder clay which had been dis- 
solved in the water; these would be called lacus- 
trine. Some such cause must be looked for in the 

29 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

thick deposit of brick earth at Caddington, to 
which we shall refer later, but this could not have 
been the case at S. Acheul on the Somme. Here, 
owing to the investigations of M. Commont, it is 
thought that these deposits on the terraces on the 
top of the gravel are what the scientists call sub- 
aerial, that is, deposited on the surface by the 
wind, as opposed to sub-aqueous, or under the 
action of water. The Loess, to which constant 
reference is made by the archaeologists, is a greyish- 
brown sandy and chalky loam deposited by wind in 
the form of dust. This was caused by the action 
of frost during a glacial period. As the ice re- 
treated the earth would have been a very barren 
place. There is evidence that at this period there 
were great winds and blizzards, which swept over 
these deserts and blew the dust about. This fre- 
quently led to the destruction of animal life, and 
their bones are found now in great quantities 
embedded in the Loess. The position of the Loess 
lands is very important; beginning at the Ural 
Mountains they stretch across South Russia to the 
Carpathians and the Danube, then by way of the 
north-west of Austria through South Germany into 
the north of France. The Loess did not lend itself 

30 



The A B C of Archaeology 

to the development of thick forest, so this track 
remained open as a route for prehistoric man from 
east to west, ^olian is the term for a deposit laid 
down by winds; pluvial for that by rain. On the 
second terrace of the Somme at S. Acheul (p. 26) 
at its base, on the chalk, are found the gravels with 
the remains of E, antiquuSy the southern elephant, 
and rough flint hand-axes, or bouchers, of Strepyan 
times. In the sands over the gravel are early 
Chellean implements, and these two layers were 
deposited by water. Then above this we start the 
sub-aerial deposits. First we have a white sandy 
loam with land shells. Above this is the older 
Loess, or Derm, in three layers, consisting of sands, 
and sandy loams, with gravel at base. Here are 
found remains of the red deer, and in the upper 
layer implements of the Upper Acheulean period. 
Above these three layers come three others of the 
younger Loess, or Ergeron, each layer divided by 
thin sections of gravel, in which are found Mous- 
terian implements. Above this comes brick earth, 
which is weathered Loess, where are found Upper 
Aurignacian and Solutrean implements, and in the 
soil washed down on the extreme top there are im- 
plements from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. 

31 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

(Refer to Chart and check the order of these 
industries.) 

Think how bewildering it must have been to find 
all these evidences of ancient civilization in one 
and the same terrace, because not only were the 
implements found in the lowermost gravels of a 
later age as one went down from terrace 3, 2, and 
1, but they also were later in each terrace as one 
approached the surface. It is owing to the genius 
of the French archaeologists that we have found 
out all this. 

In England we have had similar problems. At 
Caddington, Bedfordshire, Mr. Worthington G. 
Smith found an actual palaeolithic flint worker's 
working-place, and how he did so is most interest- 
ingly told in Man, The Primeval Savage, This 
working-place was buried under brick-earth and 
clay, at a depth from 4 to 13 feet below the sur- 
face. Here Mr. Smith discovered flint implements 
of Acheulean type, with the anvils and hammer 
stones which had been used in their production, 
and specimens can be seen at the British Museum. 
These are sharp, and have not been rolled. In 
the 4 to 13 feet thickness of ground over these were 
discovered rougher implements of Chellean type 

32 



The A B C of Archaeology 

which were earUer in date, and were covered with 
scratches or abraded, and had been rolled along. 
The suggestion is that man Hved on the lower level, 
or palseoUthic floor, on the banks of a lake, in one 
of the later interglacial periods, then an Ice Age 
came on, and he retreated to sunnier lands. At 
the beginning of the next interglacial period, a 
slowly moving, half-frozen mass descended from 
the higher ground near Caddington, and brought 
with it these older implements which had been left 
by earlier men still, and deposited these on the top 
of the later ones. 

If you go to Caddington, you can see by the 
sections of ground which are visible in the brick- 
yards, how this contorted drift pushed along in a 
semi-fluid state and then came to rest. Truly, in 
the Ice Ages the old earth was cut and carved, 
shaped and modelled in a terrific way. 

We may now sum up the problems which have 
confronted the archaeologists in their studies. We 
started the chapter with William Smith's work on 
stratification, and this has enabled the scientist to 
gauge the age of sedimentary rocks by measuring 
the rate of deposit in modern formations. On p. 
12 how the astronomers help by their calculations 

33 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

of alterations of the inclination of the earth's axis; 
and on p. 18 how the girdle moraines of old glaciers 
and their connection with the river terraces give 
another clue. 

Another method may be instanced. The scien- 
tist finds that there has been little, if any, differ- 
ence between the appearance of men and women, 
or the domestic animals, of the time of ancient 
Egypt and om* own day. This being the case, the 
Piltdownman (Fig. 10), E, antiquus, and the sabre- 
toothed tiger must be very remote, though it must 
be borne in mind that sudden changes of climate 
would have correspondingly rapid changes of men 
and animals. 

Out of all these facts, the archaeologists have en- 
deavoured to form a scale of time by which to 
measure the age of these prehistoric civilizations, 
and this we have incorporated in our Chart. It 
should not be taken too much to heart, and need 
not disturb any boy's or girl's Faith; it seems to us 
a splendid picture; all these thousands of years, 
and man moving through them alert, resourceful, 
and plucky, and on an upward path! 



34 



CHAPTER II 

THE STREPYAN, CHELLEAN, AND ACHEULEAN 
MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE 

We can now pass to a consideration of the most 
interesting part of our study — Prehistoric man. 
What did he do on the banks of the Somme, the 
Thames, or the Wey; how did he fend for himself, 
his wife, and children? Or did he at first look after 
himself, and preach the doctrine of self-help to the 
family? Perhaps before we endeavour to sum up 
his doings, it will be well to take stock of his scanty 
belongings. 

Having done this latter, we shall then have to 
look about for a model to help us. A painter uses 
a dummy which he calls a lay-figure; this he dresses 
up and poses for the picture. In the case of pre- 
historic man, our model must be drawn from the 
savage races of modern times; and remember there 
are still people who use stone, because they cannot 
work iron, but such types are few and far between 
now, and have lost their old self-reliance and in- 

35 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

terest by contact with civilization. Obviously we 
cannot draw any useful comparisons between pre- 
historic and civilized man; they are poles apart so 
far as their lives are concerned; but, if we go back 
a little to the earlier voyagers, we can find records 
of people who were still living as simple and primi- 
tive a life as the prehistoric men. 

Darwin started on his epoch-making voyage in 
the Beagle on the 27th December, 1831. He was 
not quite twenty-three, and was away for nearly 
five years, during which time he went round the 
world, and saw many native races. He wrote his 
book on The Voyage of the Beagle on his return, and 
if any boy or girl has not read it, it is a defect which 
can be speedily remedied, because there is a cheap 
edition in the ''Everyman" series. We shall draw 
on Darv/in, then, for comparisons. Even before 
his time the poor Tasmanians had been banished 
to an island, and had ceased to exist as a nation. 
They were an exceedingly primitive people, and 
fortunately for us Mr. H. Ling Roth's book on the 
Aborigines of Tasmania contains a most graphic 
and interesting account of all that went to make 
up their everyday life. Messrs. Spencer and 
Gillen's books have been drawn upon for details 

36 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

of the native Australians. Now for prehistoric 
man himself. 

We have referred to the archaeologist as a pick 
and shovel historian, because he digs for his know- 
ledge. This means he digs for what is left of man. 
It is rather sad that man does not lend himself to 
the fossilization of his remains. He has always 
been a restless individual. The lower animals in 
kindly fashion seemed to arrange that their bodies 
might sink in the water, settle in the mud, and be- 
come beautiful fossils. This often came about as 
the result of drought — the poor beasts maddened 
by thirst would dash into the muddy bed of a river, 
and be too exhausted to pull themselves out. That 
they did so, has enabled us to find out about them, 
Man did not do this ; he was too busy or too careful, 
and died out in the open; just dropped in his tracks, 
and did not think how inconvenient it would be for 
us — this neglect on his part to become a fossil. So 
his remains are very seldom found. 

We have made a series of drawings of the types 
of skull which are known, and which are being re- 
ferred to constantly by the archaeologists, and 
which our readers are sure to meet if they begin to 
study seriously. Fig. 8 is of the Pithecanthropus 

37 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

erectuSy or the first of the sub-men. In 1891 Prof. 
E. Dubois found the roof of a skull, two molar 
teeth, and a thigh-bone (femur) at Trinil in Java. 
The position is interesting because of its relation 
to Australia and Tasmania. The remains were 
found in river deposit of late Pliocene, or early 
Pleistocene, character. These were found in con- 
junction with the bones of many of the lower 
animals of the same period; but there were no 
implements. 

The brain-pan of Pithecanthropus exceeds that 
of any ape, and equals about two-thirds that of 
modern man. Prof. G. Elliot Smith thinks that its 
features prove that the man belonged to the human 
family, and enjoyed rudimentary powers of speech. 
Darwin, writing of the Fuegians, said: ''The lan- 
guage of those people, according to our notions, 
scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain 
Cook has compared it to a man clearing his throat, 
but certainly no European ever cleared his throat 
with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking 
sounds." The thigh-bone of Pithecanthropus 
shows that he walked upright, but the teeth are 
more simian than human. Pithecanthropus was 
a link between gibbon and man. He probably re- 

38 




ft t 

Fig. 9. — A Theory of Flint Flaking. 





Fig. 10. — Eoanthropus Dawsoni^ the Piltdown Man. 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

treated to the trees when he was alarmed, and may 
have contrived rough shelters or nests there, but 
of this, of course, we cannot be sure. The scien- 
tists went to Java because Europe was deserted by 
the man-like apes in early Pliocene times, as the 
temperature became colder. A more genial climate 
than ours was necessary for the development of 
this link, which, with brain, added to bone and 
muscle, was to connect them with us. 

It is sad that Prof. Dubois could not find any 
tools or implements associated with Pithecan- 
thropus, because it might have helped to clear up 
the knotty question of the Eoliths. These are 
very primitive flint implements (see Fig. 9), which 
one school of archaeologists say must have been 
made by very primitive men; the opposing school 
contesting that they have been produced by 
natural causes. 

Our readers will, we think, agree with us that 
the early flints (as Fig. 18), the human origin of 
which is unquestioned, could not have been pro- 
duced at once. Thousands of years in all proba- 
bility passed before early man got into his dull 
head the idea of shape. At first he must have used 
any stick, stone, or shell that came handy. Prob- 

41 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

ably happy accident came to his aid; he broke a 
flint and found that it had a keen cutting edge. At 
the identical moment that it occurred to him to turn 
this flint into a rough tool by trimming it into shape, 
he took the first step towards civilizing himself. 

When man discovered the use of fire, he had an 
ally which not only cooked his food and warmed 
his body, but would at the same time have sharp- 
ened and hardened a stick of wood, so that it could 
be used as a spear. Put any piece of wood in a 
fire and char the end; when scraped it is pointed in 
shape. 

In Pre-PalcBolithic Man, by Mr. J. Reid Moir, an 
interesting suggestion is put forward as to the de- 
velopment of the flint implement. We have made 
a drawing (Fig. 9) to illustrate this. Mr. Moir 
thinks that primitive man first used a split flint as 1. 
Its base would have had a sharp edge all round. 
Perhaps in use this edge got chipped, with the re- 
sult that it became sharper. The flaking may then 
have been developed by man to make a scraper. In 
2 this is done on both sides, with a resulting third 
edge or keel. By flaking all over the face 3 was 
obtained, and this is called the rostro-carinate 
type. 1, 2, and 3 all have flat bases. In 4 the 

42 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

edges of the base have been knocked off, and a type 
is obtained which is Hke the Chellean implements 
we shall see later. 

Fig. 2 gives a rostro-carinate or eagle's beak flint 
in more detail. 

Our drawing of Pithecanthropus (Fig. 8) has 
been based on the plaster cast at the Natural His- 
tory Museum at South Kensington. Here can be 
studied the fossil remains of man, and there is a 
fine collection of casts of primitive skulls. In 
drawing from these, it is evident that one may ob- 
tain an expression of character which may be either 
too brutal or too civilized, but the shape of the 
skull remains, and this determines the poise of the 
head, and many general characteristics of the face. 
We do not know if Pithecanthropus ever lived on 
the banks of the Somme, or Thames, because no 
human remains of his type have been found in 
England. His cousins may have existed nearer 
the equator in Africa, and their descendants then 
have found their way across the isthmus we referred 
to into Europe. 

Our next illustration (Fig. 10) is of a very cele- 
brated person, the Piltdown Man, Eoanthropus 
Dawsoni, or the Man of the Dawn, so named after 

43 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

his finder, Mr. Charles Dawson. We should be 
very proud of Eoanthropus, because he is the first 
known Englishman. In 1912 men were digging 
for gravel, and came across a skull which they 
broke up and threw away; a rather brutal thing to 
do, and in this case supremely foolish as well. One 
piece of the skull came into the possession of Mr. 
Dawson, who, recognizing its value, at once made 
search for the remaining portions. Other parts of 
the skull were found, a lower jaw, and later on a 
canine tooth. Since 1912 scientific men all over the 
world have written articles, indulged in friendly 
controversy, and found out all sorts of things about 
the Piltdown man. The remains were found in old 
river, or plateau, gravels, at Piltdown in the Sus- 
sex weald, the age and formation of which is un- 
certain, but in the gravels are fossil remains of ani- 
mals dating from late Pliocene, and early Pleisto- 
cene, times, and as well the roughly worked flints 
called Eoliths ; and some later ones, Palseoliths of an 
early type. Both the fossil remains of the late Plio- 
cene and the Eoliths are much water-worn and 
rubbed, as if they had been rolled along, whereas 
the early Pleistocene fossils and the early Palseo- 
liths have sharp edges and are not water- worn. 

44 




Fig. 14. — Strepyan 
Boucher or Hand-axc 



Fig. 13. — Making Fire. 




Fig, II.— The Pilt- 
down Man's Bone 
Implement. 



1 . ^r/^(^/^l " -■ 

Fig. 15. — Macharodus, the Sabre-toothed Tiger. 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

From these facts the scientists assume that the 
PHocene fossil remains and the Eohths are older 
than the gravel, and were brought down by early 
rivers from some other land surface, as at Cadding- 
ton (p. 26), and deposited with the stones which 
form the gravel. It is further assumed that the Pilt- 
down man, and Pleistocene fossil remains, and 
the early Palseoliths may be of the same age, early 
Pleistocene. Boys and girls can judge this for them- 
selves, because at the Natural History Museum at 
South Kensington, in the gallery of Fossil Mam- 
mals (Table Case 1), they can see a plaster cast of 
the skull, and the various fossil remains under it. 

If this is so, then the Eoliths have to be ac- 
counted for, and must have been produced by 
some ancestor of the Piltdown man, who might 
have resembled the Java subman; though unfortu- 
nately no earlier human remains than the Piltdown 
man have been found in this country, and the 
Java man forgot to have his implements at hand 
when he started to become a fossil. 

To revert to the skull, the Piltdown man is alto- 
gether a much more presentable person than his 
Java ancestor; he had a respectable forehead — a 
better one, indeed, than the Mousterian man of 

47 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

Neanderthal type whom we shall meet later on. 
The brain capacity is about 1300 cubic centimetres, 
which is about equal to the smaller human brain 
of to-day; but with this evident increase in brain 
power, he still retained a very animal lower half 
to his face. The canine tooth is ape-like in shape, 
and would have been used as a weapon for offence 
or defence. The jaws stick out and give the face 
what is called a prognathous character. The 
skull is extraordinarily thick, 10 to 12 millimetres, 
as against 5 to 6 in modern man. The Piltdown 
man could, and probably did, butt a rival away, 
but notwithstanding all this he was on the upward 
grade. 

The skull is what the scientists call mesatice- 
phalic in shape, cephalic index about 78, and, as we 
shall be constantly meeting this and other terms 
used in relation to skulls, we will explain them now. 
The cephalic index is the ratio or percentage of the 
breadth of the head to the length, the latter being 
taken as one hundred. 

Skulls with index of 70-75 = Dolichocephalic (long). 
" " 75-80 = Mesaticephalie (inter- 
mediate) . 
'' " 80-85 = Braehycephalic (round). 
48 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

For example, assuming a skull has a breadth of 135 

millimetres and a length of 180, we get ^oF] ^ 

cephalic index of 75. If our readers have a large 
pair of calipers, they can measure up their friends, 
and inform them what their cephalic index happens 
to be. 

One detail about the Piltdown man is, that the 
scientists think, by the shape of his brain, that he 
was right-handed. This makes him seem much 
more intimate. 

As well as the Eoliths and Palseoliths, Mr. Daw- 
son discovered a very extraordinary implement 
made of the thigh-bone of an elephant, and this 
cannot be later than early Pleistocene, because the 
bone of which it is made came from Elephas meri- 
dionalis, or E, antiquus, which lived in Europe in 
late Pliocene or early Pleistocene times. There 
were larger elephants than the Mammoth, who 
comes later, and had need to have been to provide 
thigh-bones of suflScient size to make this imple- 
ment. It is 16 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 1 to 
2 inches thick, shaped rather like the blade of a 
bat, and not water-worn; so, like the early Palseo- 
liths, its age must be the same as the gravel in which 

49 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

it was found. The use of the implement is un- 
known. There is a model of it at the Natural 
History Museum, and we give a cut (Fig. 11) 
which has been drawn from this. It will be no- 
ticed that the implement appears to have been 
perforated at one end, so a thong may have been 
attached here, and the implement thrown at small 
game, and then retrieved from the thick under- 
growth by being hauled back, but this seems a 
clumsy way when stones were at hand. 

Our next drawing (Fig. 12) looks rather like a 
new design for the four of spades. This is not the 
case; it shows the Piltdown man making flint im- 
plements. The ones illustrated are about SJ^ 
inches long. The stone held in the right hand 
acted as a hammer, and with this flakes were 
knocked off, and shape given to the implement. 
Flint flaking is an art, as can be easily tested by 
trying to make an implement oneself. It is a 
comparatively easy matter to strike off a flake, 
but a very diifficult one to shape it. The actual 
idea of symmetry marks a great advance, and is 
the beginning of a sense of proportion; a feeling 
that the implement will not only cut as well as the 
rough flake, but that it would look better, and be 

50 




Fig. 12. — Piltdown ATan making Flint Implement. 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

more pleasant to handle, if it were shaped. It is 
this shaping which makes us feel that the Eoliths 
must have been made by humans, because we can- 
not believe that they would arrive at the stage 
shown in Fig. 12 without endless experiment. 

These flints of the Piltdown man are presentable- 
looking objects; he has begun to take a pride in his 
work, which, when you come to think about it, is 
the most satisfactory emotion that boy or man can 
experience. 

These implements would have had all sorts of 
uses. Flint can be made as sharp as a razor, and 
they served as the knives of the day, and were used 
[ to cut up a beast, scrape a bone, dig up pig-nuts 
or shape a stick. Flint is extraordinarily hard — 
until quite recently it was used in connection with 
steel and tinder to produce fire. If a piece is struck 
against steel, minute fragments of the latter fly off, 
heated by the blow to such an extent that they burn 
in the air as sparks. Prehistoric man probably ob- 
tained his fire in this way, using, instead of steel, 
marcasite, an iron sulphide found in association with 
flint, or he may have done so by friction, rubbing 
one piece of wood up and down in a groove in an- 
other piece, until the dust ignited (see Fig. 13). 

53 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

We will now refer back to our diagram (Fig. 6), 
and go into the detail of the implements which are 
found on the banks of the Somme. In the gravels 
of terrace No. 3, the worked flints are said to be of 
Strepyan, or pre-Chellean, design. Strepy is a 
place in Belgium. The implements are roughly 
flaked, and generally have some part of the original 
crust remaining. Fig. 14 shows a rough form of 
boucher, a term invented by Prof. SoUas, in 
honour of M. Boucher de Perthes, who first found 
worked flints on the Somme. The French call 
this a coup de poing; hand-axe is another term. 
The boucher was held in the hand, but, we think, 
not as a dagger, point down; we say this, because 
in the collection of our friend, Harold Falkner of 
Farnham, all the points are intact, and only the 
side edges show signs of wear. We think the butt 
was held in the palm of the hand, with the first 
finger along one edge, to cut with the other. 

Strepyan man also used flints fashioned for 
scraping fat off the skins of the animals he killed, 
and the bark off all the odd pieces of wood that he 
must have needed. His spears would have been 
of wood. When he lived on the banks of the Somme 
in the First Interglacial period, he had as com- 

54 




Fig. i6.— The Pitfall. 




Fig. 17.— Galley Hill Man. 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

panions two huge elephants, E. meridionalis and 
E. antiquus; the hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and 
sabre-toothed tiger; and a horse, E. stenonis. The 
naturahsts tell us that the teeth of E. antiquus were 
adapted to eating the small branches and foliage 
of trees. This gives an interesting indication of the 
Strepyan climate. It must have been warm and 
genial for these southern animals to have flourished. 

How man fended for himself we cannot tell ; armed 
only with a boucher, which he perhaps haf ted as a 
spear, he could have but little chance against an 
elephant, 15 feet high to the top of the shoulder. 

If looks are any criterion, the sabre-toothed tiger, 
Machcerodus (Fig. 15), must have been an evil 
beast. There is a plaster cast of one at the Natural 
History Museum. Machserodus was widely dis- 
tributed and existed in England with the cave men 
who came later on; this we know because his teeth 
have been found in Kent's Cavern and Cresswell 
Caves. Man could only have combated such 
animals by craft; fire and traps were his weapons, 
and one expects that he was not too proud to eat 
the remains of the tiger's feast. Fig. 16 is of a pit- 
fall in use by the natives of British East Africa. 
Labour was plentiful in Strepyan days, and every- 

57 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

body lent a hand. To dig the pit would not have 
been beyond the wit of prehistoric man, and the 
stakes could have been sharpened and the points 
hardened by fire. Such a pit would have been a 
beginning of the long battle between brain and 
mere bulk. This would have been one wav in 
which prehistoric man obtained the meat that he 
needed for his food. He was, of course, as carnivo- 
rous as his foe the tiger. He possessed neither 
flocks, nor herds, and did not grow any corn. 

Darwin tells us that "the Gaucho in the Pampas, 
for months together, touches nothing but beef. But 
they eat, I observe, a very large proportion of fat." 

Again, Darwin gives us a splendid picture of 
how to support life, when there is not a butcher's 
shop just round the corner, but you have to catch 
your supper before you can cook it. He was in 
the Falkland Islands at the time. His Gaucho 
separated a fat cow from a herd of wild cattle, 
and caught it with his lazo. It was then ham- 
strung, and killed by driving a knife "into the head 
of the spinal marrow." These details are given 
because, when you are a prehistoric man, you can't 
afford to be sensitive. A large circular piece of 
flesh was then cut out of the back, with the skin 

58 




Fig. i8. — Chellean Boucher or 
Hand -axe. 





TKONV 

jSlDE/ 
i? 



Fig. 19. — Oval Implement. 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

attached ; this was roasted on the embers, with the 
hide downwards and in the form of a saucer, so that 
none of the gravy was lost. 

Though the weather was wet, the Gauchos man- 
aged to Hght their jBre. First with their flint and 
steel they get a spark on to their piece of charred 
rag or tinder. Then "they sought beneath the 
tufts of grass and bushes for a few dry twigs, and 
these they rubbed into fibres; then surrounding 
them with coarser twigs, something like a bird's 
nest, they put the rag with its spark of fire in the 
middle and covered it up. The nest being then held 
up to the wind, by degrees it smoked more and 
more, and at last burst out in flames." 

For fuel the Gauchos "found what, to my sur- 
prise, made nearly as hot a fire as coals, this was 
the skeleton of a bullock lately killed, from which 
the flesh had been picked by the carrion hawks." 

Darwin enjoyed his supper, and recommended 



'*carne con cuero. 



Chellean Man 

The next stage in man's development, which is 
recognized by the archaeologists, is that called 

61 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

*'Chellean." This name comes from Chelles, on 
the Seine, near Paris. There has been consider- 
able controversy as to what Chellean man was Uke. 
Here in England at Galley Hill, Swanscombe, 
Kent, a skeleton was found in 1888, which we illus- 
trate (Fig. 17), and which Sir Arthur Keith con- 
tends is that of a Chellean man. The head is of 
great length, but not very high. The skull is very 
thick, the eyebrow ridges not nearly so much de- 
veloped as in the later Neanderthal type. The 
chin is beginning to be quite modern, but the teeth 
are primitive. It may well be that here in Eng- 
land in Chellean times the men were developed 
who in the end became homo sapiens, Chellean 
implements are found in Swanscombe which cor- 
respond to those found in the sands above the lower 
gravels of the second terrace of the Somme (Fig. 
6). Later types are found in the first terrace. 

The boucher (Fig. 18) has developed since 
Strepyan times. It was still formed by knocking 
flakes off a flint nodule, and remains the most use- 
ful tool of prehistoric man; but the Chellean 
boucher is quite a well-made implement, and the 
man who made it was becoming a good craftsman. 
His flint work was far in advance of that of the 

62 




Fig, 22. — A Break-wind. 



Fig. 21. — Falling Spear, 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

Tasmanians. Sometimes it has a thick butt end, 
and a longer point, while others are oval in shape as 
Fig. 19. The earlier the type, the thicker the im- 
plement. Fig. 20 shows a woman using a flint 
scraper, one of the most useful implements of 
prehistoric man. 

The people who know how to make these flints 
were widely distributed. Prof. SoUas says that 
bouchers are found in all the continents of the 
world, except Australia. 

Many hundreds of flint implements are often 
found in the same gravel pit, and this is thought to 
prove that large numbers of prehistoric people 
camped together. This is doubtful; food was 
scarce. It is, of course, always diflScult to remem- 
ber that an interglacial period extended over thou- 
sands of years, so that if a river bank was a favourite 
camping-place, the tools could have been dropped 
year after year, and covered up by gravel and sand 
in times of flood. We dig these to-day, and forget 
the long time which it took for the gravel to be 
deposited. Another point to be borne in mind is 
that, so far, all the remains of prehistoric man that 
we have noted have been found near water. The 
men of the river drift had to camp by the side of a 
< 65 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

river, or lake, because they had not any pots or 
pans in which to store water. Thousands of years 
passed before man made pottery. 

Another point to remember is, the one which was 
pointed out to the nineteenth-century geologists 
in regard to the same sort of fossils found in the 
rocks in different parts of the world : these were not 
all living organisms at the same time. Life pro- 
ceeds from a centre and spreads. So this widely 
distributed Chellean civilization did not start all 
over the world at one given minute. If it started 
in India, or Africa, it took time for it to reach the 
Wey, by the isthmus across the Straits of Dover. 
Prehistoric man was a great traveller, and that by 
the most urgent necessity of all: the need to find 
food. Darwin mentions two Spanish girls taken 
captive by Indians. "From their account they 
must have come from Salta, a distance in a straight 
line of nearly one thousand miles. This gives one 
a grand idea of the immense territory over which 
the Indians roam." So it was with prehistoric 
man. Remember he started as a hunter, then de- 
veloped into a herdsman, then became a farmer, 
and settled down to guard his possessions. Re- 
member as well that we call the industry Chellean, 

66 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

not because it originated at Chelles, but by reason 
of the wonderful way the French archaeologists have 
explored the remains of prehistoric man; they have 
done this so well that we have adopted their names 
for want of better ones of our own. England must 
have been an outpost of Chellean civilization. 

Chellean man had to encounter much the same 
sort of animals as those of Strepyan times. The 
huge Elephas antiquus remained as a problem for 
the hunters to tackle. They probably employed 
the pitfall to trap animals; the Australians still 
catch emus in this way, or they may have been the 
inventors of another device which is still employed 
by native races. This consists of a large and 
heavy piece of wood, which is suspended above a 
path, pointing downwards, by a grass rope. Fig. 
21 shows how the animal, pushing its way along, 
cracks the rope, with the result that the spear falls 
on to the spinal column. 

We may turn to Darwin to gain information as 
to the appearance of savage races. Writing of the 
Fuegians he said: "Their only garment consists of 
a mantle made of quanaco skin, with the wool out- 
side; this they wear just thrown over their shoul- 
ders." But the skin cloak appears to have been 

67 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

a party frock, and not for general use. Darwin 
saw them in their canoes; the sleet falling, and 
thawing on their naked bodies. He refers to the 
Fuegian wigwam which "resembles, in size and 
dimensions, a hay-cock. It merely consists of a 
few broken branches stuck in the ground, and very 
imperfectly thatched on one side with a few tufts 
of grass and rushes. ... At Goeree Roads I 
saw a place where one of these naked men had 
slept, which absolutely offered no more cover than 
the form of a hare." 

The Tasmanians made much the same form of 
shelter, using bark instead of grass and rushes, and 
we have shown the type in Fig. 22. Treat the 
drawing with respect, because it shows house No. 
1. They also went about quite naked, using occa- 
sionally a fur cloak. Both the Fuegians and the 
Tasmanians liberally anointed their bodies and 
heads with grease mixed with the ochreous earths. 
In this way they gained a certain protection from 
the weather, and it helped to keep them clean. 
Earth is a fine deodorizer. There is a good tale 
told of a party of Tasmanians given some soup, on 
the top of which floated fat; this they scooped 
off with their hands, and put on their heads, but 

68 



Strepyan, Chellean. Acheulean Men 

they did not drink the soup. Primitive man 
almost invariably roasts or bakes his meat. 

Later on we give instances of human remains 
being found, buried with red ochre, for use in the 
spirit world. This points to the covering of grease 
and ochre, having developed from a protection into 
a decoration of the body. 

Darwin wrote of the Fuegians: "The old man 
had a fillet of white feathers tied round his head, 
which partly confined his black, coarse, and en- 
tangled hair. His face was crossed by two broad 
transverse bars; one painted bright red, reached 
from ear to ear and included the upper lip; the 
other, white like chalk, extended above and parallel 
to the first, so that even his eyelids were thus 
coloured." 

We have just referred to skeletons being found 
with colour for decorating the body, and imple- 
ments for use in the spirit world, and such burials 
point to a belief in a future life. But we can find 
no traces as yet of such a belief on the part of the 
Chellean man. Captain FitzRoy of the Beagle 
could never ascertain that the Fuegians had any 
distinct belief in a future life. When driven by 
extreme hunger they killed and ate the old women, 

69 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

before their dogs, because, as they said, "Doggies 
catch otters, old women no." In the Uganda, be- 
fore a human sacrifice, the victim was made to drink 
from a magic cup to destroy his soul first. A hor- 
rible idea, but yet proving that even the most 
degraded types as a rule believe in a future life. 

As to what the Chelleans believed, we cannot 
say. 

ACHEULEAN MaN 

We can now turn to Acheulean types of imple- 
ments. Here we still have the boucher (Fig. 23), 
but it is a much better one; thinner and more finely 
flaked, with a truer edge. Scrapers were used as 
well, but Acheulean man does not seem to have had 
many more sorts of implements than his Chellean 
ancestor. It must be borne in mind that these 
names are terms used to denote certain stages in 
the development of flint implements. In reality 
the design of these was a continued growth, and 
prehistoric man did not, in any one year, leave 
off making Chellean types and introduce a new 
Acheulean fashion. 

In the description of the sub-aerial deposits on 
the terraces of the Somme (p. 31), we noted that 

70 




Fig. 24. — Ekphas primigemus, the Mammoth:. 



Fig. 23. — An Acheulean Boucher 
or Hand-axe. 




Fig. 25. — Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the Woolly- coated Rhinoceros. 



It:: 



It- II" 



^1:3 



Fig. 26. — Tasmanian Spear. 



.J4" 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

the earliest Acheulean types are found in the sands 
and gravels at the base of the lower Derm, and the 
later types in the lowest strata of the older Loess. 
This older Loess is in three layers, and in the middle 
and upper layers no implements are found. It is 
supposed to have been deposited in glacial times 
so it seems as if the weather gradually became too 
cold for man to camp by the riverside. This view is 
borne out by the remains of the animals found and 
in the implements. In the sand and gravel of the 
earlier Acheulean times, we have our old friend 
E. antiquus and the red deer, both southern 
animals; but in the later Acheulean of the lowest 
layer of the older Loess, we meet for the first time, 
E, primigenius (the mammoth). Rhinoceros ticho- 
rhinus (the woolly-coated one), horse, and lion. 
These were northern animals who came south as 
the weather became colder and the Fourth Glacial 
period drew on. 

The mammoth was not so large as E, antiquus, 
and closely resembled the existing Indian elephant, 
excepting only the tusks, which are very long and 
curved. Its teeth were more adapted for eating 
coarse grasses than the foliage of trees. The coun- 
try was becoming barer and bleaker, and trees were 

73 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

scarce. Its curved tusks perhaps acted as hay- 
rakes, and helped to gather up food. Its warm 
coat and thick skin, with a layer of fat under, pro- 
tected it from the cold weather. We know all 
about the mammoth, because whole carcases have 
been dug up in the frozen Arctic regions, with the 
flesh, skin, and furry coats, protected through the 
ages by the ice and snow in which they were em- 
bedded. Our sketch (Fig. 24) gives a general idea 
of this animal, and Fig. 25 shows the woolly- 
coated rhinoceros. 

If reference is made to the Chart, it will be seen 
that during Acheulean times the weather was get- 
ting colder, and as the ice-cap crept down, so these 
animals from the northern regions retreated before 
it. Man appears for the same reason to have 
looked about for warmer shelter than the open-air 
camps, and to have retreated to the caves and 
caverns. 

Before we pass on to the Cave-dwellers, let us 
sum up what we have found out about prehistoric 
man, and draw some comparisons. We say that 
he was a nomad and a hunter, but unless we are 
careful to think a little, the mental picture we 
form is of some one rather like ourselves; a little 

74 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

rougher perhaps, and more whiskery, but with 
a background of soHd comfort somewhere. We 
shall be right in imagining the Chellean a man like 
ourselves, with an active brain, but comfort as we 
understand it did not exist for him. 

We do not realize that prehistoric man was a 
nomad, or wanderer, because he had to hunt for 
his food; that unless he hunted he starved. It is 
really extremely difficult to imagine a state of 
affairs when a man's sole possessions consisted of a 
flint boucher for tool; a wooden spear for a weapon, 
and a skin for covering; when all else had to be 
searched for; when pots and pans did not exist; 
when pottery and weaving had not been invented. 
Yet such people have existed until comparatively 
recent times. Tasmania was discovered in 1642, 
by Abel Janszoon Tasman, who named it Van 
Diemen's Land, after Anthony Van Diemen, the 
Governor of the Dutch East Indies. In an amus- 
ing way it has been renamed after its discoverer. 
After his time Tasmania was visited by other 
voyagers. Captain Cook being one in 1777, and 
they found the Tasmanians to be to all intents and 
purposes a prehistoric people. It seems as if, in 
remote ages, when Asia, like Europe, had a differ- 

75 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

ent coastline, the Tasmanians had come from the 
mainland into Australia and, retreating again be- 
fore stronger races, found their way in the end 
into Tasmania, before it was so much cut oflf as it 
is iiow. There may have been an isthmus across 
Bass Strait, as there was in Europe across the 
Straits of Dover. At some later period this dis- 
appeared, and the Tasmanians were left free to 
remain the simple primitive folk they were when 
first discovered. 

They had not the use of iron, and their only 
tools were made of flint, and very rough ones at 
that. They had not any "boucher" which was as 
good a piece of work as that of Chellean man (Fig. 
19). Generally the Tasmanians went about quite 
naked, but on occasions wore a skin cloak. Kan- 
garoo skins were dressed as rugs to sit upon. Wet 
and cold did not appear to harm them, and their 
houses, as Fig. 22, were the merest break-winds. 
When in 1831 the miserable remainder of the natives 
were exiled to Flinders Island, and lodged in huts, 
it was found that they caught cold far more readily 
than when living in the open. Like the Fuegians 
in their native state, they greased their bodies, and 
anointed themselves with red ochre; this gave a 

76 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

certain protection. They were also fond of making 
necklaces of shells, and ornamented their bodies 
by forming patterns of scars (cicatrization) left by 
cuts made with a sharp flint. They were nomads 
moving about the country in search of food; this 
meant that in hard times the very old and infirm 
people were left to die, and sometimes the babies 
had to be sacrificed. 

In hunting game like kangaroo they used plain 
spears, as Fig. 26, made of a hard wood. This is 
not quite the simple thing it seems. Pithecan- 
thropus would have picked up any long stick to hit 
with, and it may have slipped from his hand. He 
then discovered that unless one end was heavier 
than the other, it did not follow a very straight 
line of flight; it might knock down a bird, but would 
not pierce with its point the skin of an animal, so 
through the long ages the Tasmanian spear de- 
veloped. This was cut, trimmed, and scraped 
with flint. Straightened by being passed over a 
fire, the teeth were used instead of the later shaft- 
straightener (Fig. 46). The end was charred by 
fire, and so hardened, and then pointed by scrap- 
ing. The point was at the heavy end; 20 inches 
from this the circumference was 3 inches, in the 

77 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

middle 23^ inches, and 2 inches from the end only 
y^ inch. The total length was 11 feet 11 inches. 
The Tasmanian could throw this, and kill an 
animal at from 40 to 50 yards, and did not use a 
throwing-stick, as Fig. 34. Unlike the Australians, 
they used neither boomerangs nor shields. Their 
other weapon was the waddy, or wooden club, 
about 2 feet 6 inches long, and they threw stones 
with great accuracy. 

The Tasmanian wooden spear had its counter- 
part in England in the Old Stone Age. In a very 
interesting book just published, written by Mr. 
O. G. S. Crawford, and called Man and his Past, is 
an illustration of what is probably the only known 
palaeolithic wooden object. It is apparently the 
broken head of a wooden spear about 15 inches 
long, pointed at one end, and about 13^^ inches 
diameter at the other. It looks exactly as if the 
end had been broken off the Tasmanian spear 
(Fig. 26), and was found at Clacton in Essex, in 
the E, antiquus bed in association with an early 
type of flint implement. 

It may well be, that here in England, Chellean 
man hunted and killed smaller game than this 
southern elephant; to have attacked E. antiquus 

78 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

with such a spear would have been to add so trifling 
an injury to such a tremendous insult, that the 
huge beast would have turned on the hunter with 
disastrous results; probably the pitfall was the 
method adopted (p. 57). 

We think the illustration in Mr. Crawford's 
book is the first which has appeared of this Clacton 
spear. The book itself consists of a series of bril- 
liant essays on the whole Art of Archaeology, and 
should be read by any boy, or girl, who wishes to 
acquire the proper atmosphere for more detailed 
study. 

The Tasmanians were wonderful trackers, with 
very acute sight, hearing, and smell. 

They ate the animals and birds they caught. 
Without any preliminaries these were thrown on to 
a wood fire which singed the hair and feathers and 
half -cooked the carcase. Then the bodies were 
cut apart with a flint and gutted, and the cooking 
finished off by spitting the joints on sticks, and 
toasting over the fire. A little wood ash served 
instead of salt. The meat was always roast, 
because there were not any pots to boil in. 

The Tasmanians ate shell-fish as well, and these 
the women caught by diving into the sea and 
6 81 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

searching the rocks under water. They had not any 
nets, hooks, or Hnes. The women were not treated 
very well, and had to do all the other work while the 
men hunted. They sat behind their lords at meals, 
who, reclining on one arm in Roman fashion, passed 
the tougher morsels to their dutiful spouses. 

The Tasmanians had one notable possession in 
their raft. This was not hollow like a boat, but 
made of cigar-shaped rolls of very light bark like 
cork. One large central roll had two smaller ones 
lashed to it with grass rope to prevent rolling; see 
section on Fig. 27; so that it was a raft in canoe 
shape. With these, or in them, they crossed from 
headland to headland, and the type may have been 
a survival of the earlier boats by which their an- 
cestors found their way down from the mainland, 
and bridged the gaps between the islands, if the 
isthmus we referred to did not exist. 

This raft is of great interest, because at some 
time or other it must have been a notable develop- 
ment. Pithecanthropus, if he ever went boating, 
did so on any floating log, and discovered to his 
disgust that it needed pointing, if it was to be 
paddled along, and also that some sort of arrange- 
ment was necessary to prevent it rolling over in 

82 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

the water, and giving him an involuntary bath. 
The beginning came in some such way. One de- 
velopment was the dug-out, and certain prehis- 
toric men, with fire and flint, shaped and hollowed 
their log in this way. 

The Tasmanian was another and very much 
readier method. The rafts were used for fishing, 
and carried three to four men comfortably; the 
spear, which was their only fishing implement, 
served as well for a paddle. A clay floor was made 
at one end, and here a fire was lighted. 

It is diflScult for us to realize, with matches at 
hand, what a precious possession fire was to any 
primitive people. To obtain it they had to follow 
the method Darwin saw practised by the Tahitians. 
"A light was procured by rubbing a blunt-pointed 
stick in a groove made in another, as if with the 
intention of deepening it, until by friction the dust 
became ignited" (Fig. 13). It must have been a 
diflScult business, depending on a supply of dry 
moss, or fibrous bark, which could be lighted from 
the dust set on fire by friction. The Tasmanian 
then carried his fire about with him in the form of 
decayed touchwood, which would smoulder for 
hours, and could then be blown into flame. 

83 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

They made grass rope and string, by twisting 
long wiry grass or fibrous bark, as Fig. 28. This 
illustration is of great interest, in that it leads up 
to the development of the spinning spindle shown 
in Fig. 40. Primitive man, of course, used sinews 
and hide thongs for ties. They also made clumsy 
reed baskets, and at the British Museum is a water- 
carrying vessel, made by skewering up the corners 
of the leaf of a large seaweed kelp. It looks rather 
like a mob-cap. With a grass rope they climbed 
high trees. They passed the rope round them- 
selves and the tree; cut holes in the bark for their 
big toes, first on one side, and then the other, and 
as they went up, jerked the rope and themselves 
up the tree together. 

It is not known if they had any idea of trade or 
barter, but they did not grow any crops, or possess 
any domesticated animals. They were without 
any overlords, laws, or regular government. 

If they ailed, an incision was made in the body, 
to let the pain escape. The dead were sometimes 
burned, and sometimes placed in hollow trees. 
After burning, the remains might be buried, but 
the skull retained and worn as a memento, or at 
other times this was buried separately. They be- 

84 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

lieved in a life after death on a pleasant island with 
their ancestors. 

We will finish off this account of the Tasmanians 
by an amusing description of one of the ways they 
had of settling their quarrels: "The parties ap- 
proach one another face to face, and folding their 
arms across their breasts, shake their heads (which 
occasionally come in contact) in each other's faces, 
uttering at the same time the most vociferous and 
angry expressions, until one or the other is ex- 
hausted, or his feelings of anger subside." An 
extremely sensible method, and amusing for the 
onlookers, which is more than can be said of 
civilized methods of quarrelling. 

It is not very creditable to the civilized white 
races, that the Tasmanians should have been used 
so badly that they have now become extinct. 
Truganini, the last survivor, died in 1877, and, we 
hope, found the dream of the pleasant island and 
the kindly ancestors come true. A nation can die 
of a broken heart, even as individuals ; or shall we 
say, they lose heart. Think of a people who have 
supported life with no other aid than spears, 
waddies, and chipped flints; then other people 
come in ships, with a wonderful apparatus for liv- 

85 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

ing, which makes the sticks and stones seem f ooUsh 
and inadequate. The old people naturally lose inter- 
est and heart, and the desire to go on living, or be- 
come hangers-on, and so come to an end. All of 
which is very sad. 

We have written enough to prove that Chellean 
and Acheuleanmen,in their flint bouchers, possessed 
tools with which they could make the spears that 
they needed to kill game for food; their mode of liv- 
ing must have been very similar to the Tasmanians. 
Shall we now try to conjure up a picture of a tribe 
here in England in Chellean and Acheulean times, 
and find out if we can how they supported life.^^ 

The tribe was like a large family in those days. 
There might have been a headman, who would 
have been the boldest of the hunters, but little if 
any system of government. The women did all 
the work, and looked after the children, and meant 
more to them than the father, whose place was 
with the hunters. So much was this the case that 
custom grew up in savage races of tracing descent 
on the mother's side. 

The tribe would not have been particularly 
quarrelsome, unless their neighbours trespassed on 
their hunting-grounds. War is a civilized institu- 

86 




28. — Making Grass Rope. 



Fig. 30. — Neanderlhaler or Mousterian, 




Fig. 3 1. —Poise of the 
Mousterian Figure. 



Fig. 33.— Mouster- 
ian Spear-head. 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

tion, based as a rule on the desire to obtain some 
other nation's property. Prehistoric man had 
little temptation in this way. Our tribe may have 
camped on the banks of the Wey for the summer. 
The river was a much bigger one than it is now, and 
one hopes they found the fishing good. In any 
case they would only have had the wooden spear to 
lance the fish with, and a flint boucher to cut it up 
afterwards. There would have been berries to 
eat, the roots of bracken and ferns, and nuts in the 
autumn, crab apples, wild cherries, and sloes. The 
bee had to give up his store to greedy hands that 
tore the comb, and crunched it up without waiting 
to run out the honey. There were snails and shell- 
fish, grubs and beetles, and luscious caterpillars. 

Greatest joy of all a dead elephant, or hippo, or 
perhaps a rhinoceros, then would the tribe have sat 
down, and eaten their way through the carcase; if 
it happened to be a little bit high, we need not sniff, 
because we still like pheasant in the same condition. 

But rough plenty would not last; hard times and 
winter would come on, and the tribe range far and 
wide in search of food. They would grow lean- 
ribbed as wolves, and just as savage. They would 
be driven by hunger to attack living game, and in 

89 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

the fight some would die that the others might Hve. 
The survivors at the meal would not have pre- 
sented a pleasant spectacle; they would have torn 
the beast to pieces, and eaten it raw. 

It must have been a hard life, yet the Call of the 
Wild still takes the big-game hunter to Africa, and 
the explorer to Polar Regions. The sick and ailing 
went to the wall, because little could be done for 
them. If a tooth ached, it continued to do so, until 
it stopped of its own accord. Chellean man did 
not practise dentistry. Notwithstanding all this, 
he was not a degraded savage, because this means 
a falling from high estate. He possessed the soul 
which makes man the restless individual that he 
still is. Just as the inventor of to-day has con- 
quered the air, and seeks to harness all the powers 
of nature, so Chellean man experimented with his 
chipped flints, and found out the way to support life. 
There were doubtless good, bad, and indifferent 
men, as there are now; some who push the world 
along, and others who retard its progress, but 
whether he hated, loved, hunted, or fought, our 
ancestor was fighting our battles as well as his own, 
and through all the thousands of years slowly 
struggling on an upward path. 

90 



Strepyan, Chellean, Acheulean Men 

Note. — In the limited space of this chapter, we have not been able to 
write much as to the actual manufacture of flint implements, or show the 
infinite variety of their shapes. At the British Museum, in the Prehis- 
toric Room, in one of the table cases, there is a series of flints arranged 
to explain their manufacture, and in the cases of the Gallery over, a col- 
lection of magnificent specimens. If readers are interested, they should 
pay a visit to Bloomsbury, or to the County Museums which have collec- 
tions. A sight of the actual implements will make our pages more real. 



91 



CHAPTER III 

THE CAVE-DWELLERS 

Our next period is that of the Cave-dwellers, or 
Mousterians, so called after the cave of Le 
Moustier, in the valley of the Vezere, Dordogne 
(Fig. 29). Here again we are indebted to the 
French archaeologists, who have examined the pre- 
historic remains so carefully that we have had to 
adopt their names. At Le Moustier, the river has 
in course of time cut its way down through the 
limestone, which is left in cliff formation at the 
sides. In the cliffs, caverns were formed by surface 
water finding its way down from the top and wear- 
ing away pockets of softer stone, or by the river 
cutting out holes in the banks. This left the 
caves ready for the occupation of man, and, as the 
weather became colder, he looked about and found 
ready-made houses, a thing we should like to do 
to-day. When prehistoric man first inhabited 
these, they were just above the flood-level of the 
river; to-day they are often high up on the banks, 

92 




u 

c 






The Cave-Dwellers 

because the river has continued to cut out its bed. 
All along the Vezere are caves, which are known all 
the world over by archaeologists, and later on we 
shall hear of La Madeleine, La Micoque, Cro- 
Magnon, and others. 

We will start by considering Mousterian man. 
In 1907, a skeleton was discovered in a cave on the 
banks of the Sourdoire, a tributary of the Dordogne, 
in the district of La Chapelle aux Saints. Let us 
at once point out that this is the first time we have 
found any evidence of people burying their dead in 
a place of sepulchre. The Piltdown man, and his 
cousin of Java, the man of Heidelberg, just dropped 
in their tracks, were brought down by the river 
currents, settled into the mud, and were covered 
up by gravel. In the case of the man of La 
Chapelle aux Saints, it is evident that he had been 
buried with care and perhaps love. Flint imple- 
ments were laid ready to his hand for use in the 
hunting-grounds of the spirit world, and food for 
his sustenance. Think of the difference this means 
in the mental outlook of the relatives, and regard 
it as a notable step up the ladder of civilization. 
A similar discovery was also made at Le Moustier 
in 1908. 

95 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

These discoveries were very important, because 
they enabled the archaeologists to be quite sure of 
their facts in respect to other skeletons which had 
been found. In 1857, a specimen was discovered 
in a limestone cave at Neanderthal, near Dussel- 
dorf, Germany; unfortunately, as in the case of 
the Piltdown man, the workmen who found it, not 
realizing its value, broke up the skeleton. Re- 
member the Java man was not discovered until 
1891, and the Piltdown man in 1912, so the scien- 
tists were not prepared for the Neanderthaler in '57. 
Some said the latter individual must have suffered 
from " something on the brain," to have had such an 
extraordinary shape to his head, but Huxley the 
great Englishman and others recognized the skull 
as human. From time to time various other skulls 
were found, until that of La Chapelle aux Saints 
confirmed the opinion that all belonged to one race, 
which is called the Neanderthal or Mousterian 
(Homo N eanderthalensis) , 

Our drawing (Fig. 30) shows what these men 
looked like, and has been made from the casts of 
the skulls of the Neanderthal and La Chapelle aux 
Saints men at the Natural History Museum. The 
most noticeable characteristic of the Mousterian 

96 




J2 
o 






6 



The Cave-Dwellers 

skull is the one very prominent ridge going right 
across the brows. The frontal bones are very 
thick, and there is not much chin to the lower jaw. 
The head is large in proportion to the height, and 
the shin and thigh bones suggest that the man stood 
with knees bent forward a little (see Fig. 31). The 
arm, again, is longer than that of modern man. 
It should be noticed that the head is placed on the 
shoulders in quite a different way to ours. If any 
of our readers stand with bent knees, they will 
find that the head and shoulders swing forward. 
Mousterian man must have loped along, head to 
ground like a hunting animal, and would have 
found it diflScult to look up (Fig. 32) . 

Mousterian man was widely distributed, and 
though he seems to have been the first to use the 
cave, he did not entirely desert the camping-places 
of his ancestors on the river banks. He is sup- 
posed to have lived at the end of the Fourth 
Glacial period, so perhaps, as the weather gradually 
became warmer, he spent some of his summers on 
the Somme. Here M. Commont has identified 
his implements in the Ergeron, or younger Loess, 
which, as we have seen, was deposited by wind on 
the terraces. 

99 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

The boucher disappeared soon after the begin- 
ning of the Mousterian period; this in Acheulean 
times was made by knocking flakes off a nodule of 
flint. The flakes were used for making small 
scrapers and the like. Mousterian man appears 
to have dressed one side of his implement first on 
the nodule, and then to have detached it as a large 
flake. This, again, is an interesting fact, and 
shows that man was beginning to economize in the 
use of material. The weather too w^as becoming 
colder, and the hills would have been covered with 
snow. Flint is only found in chalk of the creta- 
ceous beds. In many parts of the country it has 
all been cut away by the action of water, and the 
flints taken with it to form gravel in the river ter- 
races lower down. Flint suitable for making im- 
plements must have been valuable to prehistoric 
man, and a stray flint from the surface is not so 
good for flaking as one quarried out of chalk. So 
for some it meant a long journey, and encounters 
with woolly rhinoceros en route^ to obtain the raw 
material for his industry, then perhaps the barter- 
ing of skins in exchange for the flints, and a toil- 
some carrying home of the heavy stones. Perhaps 
it occurred to Mousterian man that if instead of 

100 



The Cave-Dwellers 

wasting a whole large flint to make one boucher, 
he used the flakes, he could make several imple- 
ments out of one nodule. This is what he did, and 
it marks one more step up the ladder. 

We call these Levallois flakes. Sharp-pointed 
flints are also found notched on one side, evi- 
dently for use as lance-heads (Fig. 33). 

Spherical balls of limestone have been found, and 
it is thought that these may have been used as 
bolas. Darwin describes the bolas used by the 
Gauchos of Monte Video, South America. "The 
bolas, or balls, are of two kinds. The simplest, 
which is chiefly used for catching ostriches, con- 
sists of two round stones covered with leather and 
untied by a thin plaited thong about eight feet 
long; the other kind differs only in having three 
balls untied by thongs to a common centre. The 
Gaucho holds the smallest of the three in his hand, 
and whirls the other two round and round his head; 
then, taking aim, sends them like chain shot re- 
volving through the air. The balls no sooner 
strike any object than, winding round it, they 
cross each other and become firmly hitched." 
The Gaucho lives on horseback, but the Eskimo 
goes on foot, and he uses a bolas with seven or 

101 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

eight cords, and attached stones, and this he uses 
to bring down birds on the wing. The stones are 
formed by being knocked together till they become 
round. 

The Reindeer and Musk Ox were newcomers 
from the north in Mousterian times, and were 
hunted by prehistoric man for his food; but we 
do not find anything that would lead us to suppose 
that he had as yet domesticated animals. 

There is one very black mark against the Mouste- 
rians, and that is evidence, which is supposed to 
point to cannibalism, contained in deposits in the 
Rock Shelter of Krapina, in Croatia. Here were 
found human bones which had been broken, as 
if to extract the marrow, and burnt by fire. It 
appears that the Australian aborigines, while not 
being habitual cannibals, yet practised this dread- 
ful art, as a ceremonial way of disposing of the 
dead bodies of their relatives. 

It will be seen from the foregoing that, though 
we know a little more about the Mousterians than 
about Chellean and Acheulean man, it does not 
amount to very much. We must search for some 
primitive people living under similar conditions, 
and at about the same stage of civilization as the 

102 




Fig. 34. — Australian Spear-throwing. 



Fig. 35. — Australian Spear-throwing. 




Fig. 38.— MaklnfT Fire. 




Fig. 36. — Hafting. 



Fig. 40. — A Primitive Spindle. 



The Cave-Dwellers 

Mousterians, and see if we can draw useful com- 
parisons. The aborigines of Australia are such a 
people. Of them Messrs. Spencer and Gillen 
have written that they "have no idea of perma- 
nent abodes, no clothing, no knowledge of any im- 
plements save those fashioned out of wood, bone, 
and stone, no idea whatever of the cultivation of 
crops, or of the laying in of a supply of food to tide 
over hard times, no word for any number beyond 
three, and no belief in anything like a supreme 
being." They have not been treated quite so 
brutally as the Tasmanians were, and are still al- 
lowed to exist on suflferance, and end their days as 
a race on the unfertile lands. In the beginning, it 
seems as if they followed the Tasmanians into 
Australia from the mainland, and settled there, 
driving some of the latter people into Tasmania and 
mixing with them to some extent. 

The scientists divide mankind into three groups : 
the Cymotrichi, with wavy hair like ourselves, and 
the Australians, come into this group; the Lis- 
sotrichi, whose hair is perfectly straight, like that 
of the Eskimo; the Ulotrichi, whose hair is very 
twisted, as in the case of the Negroes, Bushmen, 
and Tasmanians. Their spear shows a consider- 

105 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

able development on that of the Tasmanians, and 
resembles the Mousterian type. About ten feet 
long, some have hardwood points on to which barbs 
were spliced; others a flint point, as Fig. 33. The 
Australians use a spear-thrower. This has many 
forms, but the essential feature is a stick about a 
yard long, with a handle at one end, and a peg at 
the other. Figs. 34 and 35 show the spear-thrower 
in use. First the end of the spear is fitted on to 
the peg of the thrower. This is held in the right 
hand well behind the body, the left hand balancing 
the spear. It is then thrown up and forward, the 
thrower imparting an additional impulse as the 
spear leaves the hand. Darwin when in Australia 
saw the natives at practice. He wrote: "A cap be- 
ing fixed at thirty yards distance, they transfixed it 
with a spear, delivered by the throwing-stick with 
the rapidity of an arrow from the bow of a practised 
archer." 

This short range means that the Australian must 
be an expert hunter and tracker, if he is to approach 
within striking distance of his quarry, the kanga- 
roo. Mousterian spear-throwers have not been 
discovered in Europe as yet, but we can safely 
assume that the shorter type, as Fig. 67, which is a 

106 




3 

c 



3 
< 






The Cave -Dwellers 

harpoon-thrower, was not arrived at without many 
simpler forms going before. The AustraHan uses 
a wooden shield, which is a development on the 
Tasmanian equipment. Very much narrower than 
those of mediaeval times, it is a long oval in shape, 
varying from 2 feet to 2 feet 6 inches in length, by 
6 to 12 inches in width. Rounded on the outside, 
the inside of the shield is hollowed out so as to leave 
a vertical handle. When one thinks that this is 
all cut out of the solid with a flint, it becomes a 
notable piece of work. The shield points to 
quarrels and fighting, because its only purpose can 
be to protect the user against spear thrusts . We do 
not know if the Mousterian used shields. 

Before we forget it, let us say that our readers 
should pay a visit to the Ethnographical Gallery at 
the British Museum, and see there a spear-head 
made by the Australians, in recent times, from broken 
bottle glass; it is an astonishing production, and 
the man who made it a great craftsman. A visit 
should be paid to the British Room where there 
are Mousterian types, and so comparisons can be 
drawn. 

The Australians make very useful knives out of 
long dagger-shaped flakes of stone, and by daubing 

109 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

resin at one end form rounded handles. They 
mount sharp flakes in the ends of sticks with resin, 
and these are used as chisels and adzes. There are 
stone picks inserted like the spear-heads in cleft 
sticks, only at right angles ; these were secured with 
tendons and resin. Stone axes are made, and these 
are hafted in a withy handle, made supple by heat, 
and then bent around the axe, and fastened with 
tendons and resin. This suggests that the flaked 
stone found by Mr. Falkner at Churt, near Farn- 
ham, Surrey (Fig. 36), may have been mounted 
in much the same way. 

The Australian implements should be seen at the 
British Museum. Some of their work is ground 
and polished, and here in Europe we associate this 
with the next period, the Neolithic. Their methods 
of haf ting are of great interest, and prehistoric people 
must also have used some such way to protect 
their hands from the razor-like edges of the flints. 
Like the Tasmanians, the Australians walk abroad 
without any clothes, but wear skin cloaks in their 
huts; they stitch these together with sinew, and 
use bone awls and pins for piercing the skins. 
Necklaces and forehead bands of shells and teeth 
are worn, and they make themselves beautiful by 

110 




o 

c 






CO 



The Cave-Dwellers 

pushing a short stick, called a nose-pin, through 
the thin membrane which divides the nostrils. 
They also sacrifice joints of their little fingers, as 
we shall find the Aurignacians did in Europe. 
Their huts are very simple, and serve for the camp 
of a day or so, which makes a break in their wan- 
derings. Fig. 37 shows such a type, which may 
have been used by Mousterian man in the summer 
when he left his cave. It represents the next de- 
velopment that we should expect from the Tas- 
manian's break-wind (Fig. 22). It is, in fact, 
like two break-winds leaning together, and was 
made of any rough branches that came to hand. 

The Australians have another method of light- 
ing fires by friction: one stick is held in the 
hands and rotated in a hole in another, until the 
wood dust is ignited (Fig. 38). Darwin gives an 
improvement on this method: "the Gaucho in 
the Pampas . . . taking an elastic stick about 
eighteen inches long, presses one end on his breast, 
and the other pointed end into a hole in a piece of 
wood, then rapidly turns the curved part like a 
carpenter's centre-bit." 

Another interesting development is the bark 
canoe of the Australians, as Fig. 39. The lines of 
8 113 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

this are much the same as that of the Tasmanians 
(Fig. 27), but the construction is that of a real 
boat, not a raft. A long strip of bark is stripped 
from the gum tree with a stone axe and warmed 
over a fire to make it supple. Curved saplings, 
bent as ribs, give the shape, and a stretcher goes 
across the tops of these, and the boat is prevented 
from spreading by grass rope ties from side to side. 
The prow and stern are tied up with stringy bark. 
A small fire is carried on a clay floor. The Austra- 
lians are great fishermen and have invented a 
barbed harpoon, and fish-hooks of shell and wood. 
The point of the comparison is that in Europe, 
after Mousterian times, we come across well-made 
harpoons, which could only have been used for 
fishing. These could not have developed without 
long experiment. Mousterian man may have gone 
fishing with a spear without barbs, and from his 
poor catches may have thought out the more effec- 
tive harpoon. Therefore, they must have used 
some form of canoe, which, of course, has long 
since disappeared, so we turn to another primitive 
people for inspiration. The Australians make 
another form of canoe where bark is sewn on to the 
framework. The coracle of Wales and Ireland, 

114 



The Cave-Dwellers 

the kayak and umiak of the Eskimo, were of this 
form, only skins were used instead of bark, and this 
may have been the Mousterian method. We do 
know that in Europe in Neolithic times the dug- 
out canoe was employed. 

The Australians carry on trade by barter. The 
red ochre they need for decorating their bodies, 
may be exchanged for stone suitable for making 
implements. They have not any form of writing, 
but send news about by message sticks. There is 
one in the British Museum from North Queens- 
land. It resembles a short wooden lath about 
three inches long, with zigzag cuts and notches. 
The meaning of the message is "that the dogs are 
being properly cared for, and that the writer wants 
clothes." The lady would not have worn more 
than a skin cloak, with perhaps a hair fringe 
round her waist, and a necklace of shells, so that 
her dress allowance would not have needed to be 
very considerable. We do not hear the husband's 
reply, but expect it was that he was short of the 
equivalent of cash. The Australians are excellent 
hunters, as were the Tasmanians. Kangaroos 
are eaten, also almost all the other animals and 
birds, grubs and the pupae of ants, fish and shell- 

115 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

fish. Their cooking is very much Hke that of the 
Tasmanians, the animals, being first gutted, are 
cooked in a pit. All tendons are removed for use. 

Another notable development is that the women 
collect the seeds of various grasses and plants, and 
grind these down between stones and winnow by 
pouring from one pitchi into another, so that the 
husks are blown away. They make rough cakes 
of the resulting flour. The pitchi is a shallow 
wooden trough used for shovel or scoop as well. 
The Mousterians may have collected seeds in the 
same way, and so have started the long chain which 
led up to the household loaf of to-day. The 
Australian women use a yam or digging-stick, like 
the one illustrated (Fig. 62), but not loaded with a 
stone to increase weight. The yam-stick is not 
used to cultivate the soil, but for digging up honey, 
ants or lizards which are eaten. Remember, we 
have seen that Darwin found people living exclu- 
sively on meat, and that this was general before 
the advent of agriculture; but this collecting of 
seeds would naturally have suggested the idea of 
growing plants for food. 

The Australians did not practise cannibalism, 
except in a ceremonial way, when, as is the case in 

116 



The Cave-Dwellers 

Victoria, they regarded it as a reverent method of 
disposing of dead relatives. 

We have seen that the Tasmanians made rush 
baskets, and grass rope for climbing trees and 
tying up their rafts. With the rope they would 
have learned the principle of twisting together 
short lengths of fibre, so that these made a con- 
tinuous string. This is the principle of all spin- 
ning. The wool with which the stockings of our 
readers are darned is in reality a number of short 
hairs kept in shape by the twist of the spindle 
of the spinning machine. Fray out an inch of 
wool and see. The Arunta tribes in Central 
Australia can manufacture twine of fur or human 
hair. For this they use a spindle as A (shown in 
Fig. 40) : this is a stick about fourteen inches long 
which at the spinning end is pushed through holes 
in two thin curved sticks, about six inches long, 
placed at right angles to one another. Some fur 
or hair is pulled out, and part of it twisted with the 
finger into a thread long enough to be tied on to the 
end of the spindle; this is rotated by being rubbed 
up or down the thigh. The remainder of the fur 
held in the hand is allowed to be drawn out as the 
spindle twists the thread; this is then wound up 

117 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

on to the spindle, and more of the fur paid out, and 
more thread twisted. This, we think, is the great- 
est achievement of the Austrahans, and they, as 
we have seen, are to all intents and purposes living 
in a Stone Age. The problem is, for how long they 
have used the spindle; did they bring it with them 
in remote ages from the mainland; did prehistoric 
man, whom the Australians so closely resemble, 
use a spindle.^ They must have needed rope, and 
if they made it in this way, then the sixteenth- 
century spinning-wheel, and the eighteenth-cen- 
tury spinning-jenny, would have their roots very 
deep in the past, because both are only mechani- 
cally driven spindles which trace their descent 
from something like Fig. 40. The Australian does 
not use his twine for weaving, but contents himself 
with making net bags. Fig. 28 shows a still more 
primitive method of making twine out of long 
shreds of bark. 

The Australians have a very complicated system 
of relationship. A group will be divided into two 
classes or phratries: one-half may be Crows, the 
other Lizards. A Crow would marry a Lizard, 
not another Crow; would be kind to all the other 
Crows, and regard the birds of that name as feath- 

118 



The Cave-Dwellers 

ered friends. This was a means not only of bind- 
ing men together in fellowship and friendship, but 
it preserved the decencies, and prevented the 
marriage of persons too closely related for it to 
be seemly. Each group had various ceremonies, 
generally concerned with invoking the totem 
animal to promote plenty. In Aurignacian times 
in Europe, it is suggested that the cave paintings 
may have had totemic significance. Totemism is 
very widely spread, and gives us a new respect for 
primitive peoples; it shows them shaping their 
lives to a system, and not just chattering their way 
along like so many monkeys. 

The Australians have not any other settled form 
of government, but each group or tribe has a head- 
man, who by reason of skill in hunting or special 
gifts takes the lead. They are not a quarrelsome 
people. War is a terrible luxury in which primi- 
tive man cannot afford to indulge. His quarrels 
were mere skirmishes as to boundaries of hunting- 
grounds; it never occurs to the Australian to steal 
Ids neighbour's territory. In his opinion this is 
inhabited by the spirits of their ancestors, and so 
would be a useless possession to him. 

The Australians very frequently associate death 

119 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

not with natural causes, but with magic wrought 
by an enemy. This leads to trouble, because if 
the medicine man of the tribe names the enemy, 
and the enemy is a neighbour, he is tracked down 
and put to death. In this way, the unfortunate 
native helps to bring about his own extinction. 
This fear of magic has always been strong in the 
minds of primitive people. 

Games of all sorts are played by the children, 
who practise throwing spears, and also an amusing 
little implement called the *'weet-weet," because 
it has the form of a kangaroo rat. Then a day 
comes when the boys are grown up, and are ini- 
tiated and become men. Dances are performed 
by the men before the novitiates to typify essential 
qualities. The dog and kangaroo are shown for 
endurance and speed. The boy has one of his 
front teeth knocked out to teach him to bear pain. 
The bull roarer, a long flat leaf-shaped piece of 
wood scored across, is whirled round on a thong, 
and the whistling noise it makes is thought to be 
the voice of a god. It is the boy's introduction to 
the spiritual life of the tribe; to a knowledge of the 
Mysteries, and of the High God who lives in the 

Sky. 

120 



The Cave-Dwellers 

When an Australian is born it is assumed that he 
brings with him a churinga; these are long flat pieces 
of wood or stone with rounded ends, marked with 
various totem devices, and considered sacred ob- 
jects. These are deposited in caves, and only 
brought out for ceremonies. 

The AustraHans have various methods of dis- 
posing of their dead, but burial is the most general. 
With the bodies are interred weapons, food, and a 
drinking-cup for use in the happy hunting-grounds, 
so that in one more detail they resemble the Mous- 
terian man of La Chapelle aux Saints, with whose 
remains a flint boucher was found. 

We need not continue these comparisons, but we 
hope that those we have given may help to build 
up a picture of what the surroundings of Mous- 
terian man may have been like. 

At the end of the second chapter we gave a 
sketch of Chellean man, and tried to show that his 
most urgent need was food; that unless he hunted, 
he starved, and could not depend, as we do, on a 
shop round the corner, and the effort of other men. 
This was the material side of his life; but what of 
the spiritual? We shall be quite wrong if we 
think of primitive man as being only concerned 

121 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

with food, because man has always demanded 
some other interest. 

We have the very early belief in a life hereafter, 
in the happy hunting-grounds, where conditions 
were kindlier, and there was more opportunity to 
expand. The Chapelle aux Saints burial, with 
flint implements to hand, for use in the spirit 
world, points to this. How did this come about.? 
Primitive man, or woman, curled round asleep by 
his fire, dreamed dreams and saw visions; his spirit 
seemed to separate from his body, and he joined 
old friends who were dead, and with them followed 
in the chase, or did the wonderful things we all do 
in our dreams. When he awakened and rubbed 
sleepy eyes to find his own fireside, he told his friends 
of his adventures ; that so and so was not dead, but 
a spirit in a wonderful world. We can see the 
beginnings of ancestor worship. An acute fit of 
indigestion, coming after too much mammoth, 
would have provided the nightmare, and its 
equivalent horrors, and an underworld of bad 
spirits. 

The man of imagination would have polished 
up the tale, and filled in the gaps, and gaining 
much renown thereby, he became the medicine man 

122 



The Cave-Dwellers 

or priest. He would exorcise the evil spirits, for a 
consideration, or bring messages from the good 
ones. At other times, in the excitement of hunt- 
ing, the voice of the man would be echoed back 
from the hills, where by search he could find no 
other people. It was magical and mysterious, 
just as it was when his own face looked back at 
him from the pool to which he stooped to drink. 

The sun, moon, and stars gave him cause for 
wonder, and glaciers mightier than the Baltoro 
seemed to him alive, as they crept to the sea. He 
made them gods. Perhaps on a stormy day he 
looked through a rift in the clouds, and saw 
others heaped and peaked into glittering pin- 
nacles lighted by a sun he could not see himself, 
and thought of it all as the pleasant country of 
the land of dreams. The long nights and storms 
made him fearful. 

We can never know very much about the poor 
Mousterian, because, most sadly to relate, at the 
end of the Fourth Glacial period he became extinct 
in Europe. He had done as much as was possible 
for him. His large head, with the thick frontal 
bones, must have been very good for butting a 
brother Neanderthaler, but it was no use against 

123 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

the stone wall of advancing civilization, and like 
the Tasmanian and Bushman, the Red Indian and 
Australian of nowadays, he fades out of the picture, 
and his place is taken by a cleverer people. 



124 



CHAPTER IV 

ARTISTS OF THE OLD STONE AGE 
AURIGNACIAN MaN 

With Mousterian man the Lower Palseolithie 
period of the Old Stone Age came to an end, and 
the next phase we shall consider will be the Upper 
Palseolithie. At the base of this we find the 
Aurignacian or Loess men, and of these there are 
at least three types. Fig. 41 shows the Cr6- 
Magnon, and is a sufficient explanation why the 
poor old Neanderthaler or Mousterian went to the 
wall. 

The Cro-Magnon man gains his name because his 
remains were found in a rock shelter of that name 
in the valley of the Vezere; the same river which 
has the cave of Le Moustier on its banks (p. 92). 
The bodies had evidently been buried with rever- 
ence and were probably clothed. Flint imple- 
ments for use in the spirit world were found with 
the skeletons. The Cro-Magnon people were a 

US 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

fine race, with an average height of six feet. The 
skulls are dolichocephalic, cephalic index 73.41, 
well shaped with a capacity of 1590 to 1715 
cubic centimetres, quite up to the average to-day. 
The faces were broad and the chin well developed. 
Man's jaw was the last thing to be civilized. Our 
drawing (Fig. 41) has been made from the plaster 
casts at the British Museum, and shows a type 
which can be recognized as modern man {Homo 
sapiens) . 

The second type (Fig. 42) was discovered in 1909 
at Combe Capelle, on the Couze, a tributary of the 
Dordogne. The body, when buried, had been pro- 
vided with flint implements, and perforated shells 
were found which had probably been used to deco- 
rate the clothing. The skull is very long and 
narrow, and the skeleton that of a man of short 
stature, in contrast to the Cro-Magnon, who was 
tall. 

An Aurignacian skeleton has been found in this 
country at Paviland, in South Wales. 

At the same time there appears to have been a 
third type, the Grimaldi, in Europe during Au- 
rignacian times (Fig. 43). Skeletons have been 
found at the Grotte des Enf ants at Mentone, which 

126 



..^5=^^^ 





Fig. 42. — Combe Capelle Man. 



Fig. 41.— The Cr6-Magnon Man. 




Fig. 43. — Grimaldi Man. 



Fig. 45. — The Spokeshave. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

show marked differences to the Cro-Magnon man. 
The skulls are dolichocephalic, but the mouth 
projected in a prognathous manner, with the chin 
retreating under. The nose was flat and of negroid 
character; the people not more than 5 feet to 5 feet 
6 inches in height. Prof. SoUas, in his book 
Ancient Hunters, reviews the evidence which 
points to these people as the ancestors of the Bush- 
men of South Africa; they may, in fact, have first 
come from Africa, and then have been forced back 
by the cleverer Cro-Magnons. The Aurignacians 
were cave-dwellers but lived as well in the open; 
their camps have been found in the newer Loess 
and for this reason they have been called the 
Loess Men. If, as has been thought, the Bush- 
men may be the descendants of the Aurignacians, 
we may perhaps assume that the Loess men had 
the same sort of huts. These the Bushmen con- 
structed, much as the gipsy does to-day with a 
frame-work of bent sticks covered with skins (Fig. 
44). Darwin wrote of the "toldos" of the In- 
dians near Bahia Blanca, South America, ''these 
are round like ovens, and covered with hides; by 
the mouth of each a tapering chuzo (spear) was 
stuck in the ground." 

o no 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

The Aurignacian people improved on the Mous- 
terian flint implements; we find several sorts of 
scrapers, knives, and gravers; the latter a tool for 
engraving of which they made very clever use. 
There are scrapers flaked ingeniously into very useful 
spokeshaves, and Fig. 45 shows a man shaving 
down the shaft for a lance. The Aurignacian 
man, judged by the variety of tools which he pos- 
sessed, must have been a clever workman making 
all sorts of things; remember all his woodwork has 
disappeared, and we only find now the imperish- 
able flint, and some bone implements. With his 
burin, or graving tool he easily cut pieces out of 
reindeer horns, and made arrow and spear heads. 
This use of bone marks another step forward, and 
from now on we shall find many examples of this 
new material. Bone bodkins were used to pierce 
skins and pass sinews through, then the bodkin had 
a blunt barb formed at one end to pull the thong 
through like a crochet-needle, and so led up to the 
bone needles of Upper Solutrean times later on 
(Fig. 52). Later on we shall find barbed harpoons. 
The Aurignacian used the bow and arrow — we 
know this because shaft-straighteners have been 
found, bored to take shafts of different thicknesses. 

130 










c 
a 

C 

'o 
e8 

<: 



3 



3 
E 



CU 






Artists of the Old Stone Age 

These were used as shown in Fig. 46. The shaft, 
after having been shaved clean, would have been 
passed over a wood fire to make it supple, and then 
slipped through the hole of the shaft-straightener, 
which is cut obliquely. It can be seen that pres- 
sure applied on the handle would bend the shaft in 
any desired direction. The natives of the Punjab 
in India still straighten bamboos in this way, only 
their shaft-straightener is a substantial post set 
strongly in the ground. Through this there are 
bored holes, and the warmed bamboo is put through 
these, and curves removed by bending the stem in 
an opposite direction. The Eskimo, on the other 
hand, follows the Aurignacian way. The early 
bow, like the early gun, was probably not very 
effective, and the spear must have remained the 
great weapon. Darwin, writing of the Indians 
from the south of Chile, said: *'The only weapon 
of an Indian is a very long bamboo or chuzo, orna- 
mented with ostrich feathers, and pointed by a 
sharp spear-head." The boring of holes in the 
shaft-straightener, and the use of the bow, sug- 
gests that the Aurignacians used the bow-drill both 
to bore holes and make fire, as the Eskimos do 
(Fig. 47). 

133 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

The Aurignacians hunted as the Mousterians 
had done for their food, and people had not yet 
learned how to domesticate animals, or grow food- 
stuffs. The reindeer were very plentiful; so much 
is this the case that the French archaeologists talk 
of the Upper Palaeolithic as the Age of the Rein- 
deer. The climate was improving, and as the 
Fourth Glacial period receded, game became more 
plentiful. The horse was eaten in those days, and 
in France huge mounds of the bones have been dis- 
covered, left as the debris of many Aurignacian 
feasts. Even so late as 1831, Darwin wrote of 
South American troops: "Mare's flesh is the 
only food which the soldiers have when on an 
expedition." 

Here is an account of how the horses may have 
been caught, taken from Falconer's Patagonia: 
"The Indians drive troops of wild horses into a 
' Corral ' encompassed by high cliffs between thirty 
and forty feet high, excepting at one spot where 
the entrance lies. This is guarded to keep them 
secure." 

In our part of the country, at Ivinghoe Beacon, 
is a curious cleft in the hills, which tradition says 
was a wolf trap in olden days, and its form cer- 

1QA. 




Fig. 46. — Shaft-straightening. 



Fig. 47.— The Bow drill. 




Fig. 48. — Cervus gigantcus, the Irish Deer. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

tainly lends to it the appearance of a corral. There 
appears to have been plenty of food in Aurignacian 
times. Fig. 48 has been drawn from the skeleton 
of the Irish Deer {Cervus giganteus) in the Natural 
History Museum. This splendid animal was found 
in Europe during Pleistocene times. 

There is another fact which goes to show that 
the conditions of life were becoming easier. Man 
and perhaps woman began to draw, and to do so ex- 
tremely well. This is a most interesting fact, and 
one which should be noted, that the tribe was con- 
tent to let these people spend their time in this way. 
One can imagine that the Mousterian or Neander- 
thaler, very much occupied with the struggle for 
existence at the end of the Fourth Glacial period, 
would have dealt sternly with the budding artist, 
who desired to cut his share of the "chores," be- 
cause he wanted to draw; but in Aurignacian times 
he was allowed to do so, and drawing and sculpture 
extended into the Magdalenian period. These 
drawings and paintings are something altogether 
beyond the art of ordinary savage people. The 
Australians, for instance, decorate their wooden 
shields with red, white, and black, wavy lines, and 
lozenges, which have a pleasantly decorative effect; 

137 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

but of the polychrome figures which marked the 
culmination of Magdalenian art, the Abbe Breuil 
has written : " Et qui place les vieux peintres des ages 
glyptiques bien au-dessus des animaliers de toutes 
les civilizations de Torient classique et de la Grece." 
So here is another problem; it is quite certain that 
endless experiment must have been made before 
the artists could have arrived at such marvel- 
lous dexterity. How did these wonderful people 
jump out of the void of time? These drawings 
were first discovered by a Spanish nobleman, 
Marcellino de Santuola, who lived at Santander, 
Spain. He was interested in archaeology and was 
digging one day in the cave of Altamira, near his 
home. With him was his little daughter, who, 
tired of watching the digging, wandered round the 
cave, and alarmed her father by calling out "Toros! 
Toros!" Bulls in a cave would be somewhat 
alarming, and M. Santuola, hurrying to the rescue, 
found the small girl gazing at the roof of the cavern. 
Here he discovered drawings and paintings of bulls, 
bison, deer, horses, and many other animals, some 
life size. The discovery threw the archaeological 
world into commotion — most discoveries do ; people 
could not believe that these really wonderful 

138 




Fig. 49. — Aurignacian Drawing. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

drawings could have been produced at such an 
early stage in the world's history. Just as the 
Neanderthaler was not at first believed to be a 
man, and the Eoliths are not yet generally recog- 
nized as the work of man, so the Altamira draw- 
ings were received with scepticism. That stage 
has been passed through now, many books have 
been written, innumerable papers read before 
learned societies, and other drawings discovered 
in certain French caves, which have convinced the 
archaeologists that in the Altamira cave are authen- 
tic works of the earliest period of the world's art; 
and we owe the discovery to one small girl who called 
"Toros!" in alarm to her father. 

The old painters seem to have started with draw- 
ings in outline like Fig. 49, and then later in Magda- 
lenian times they passed on to colour (as Fig. 1), 
and some of these have an engraved outline. If 
our readers are interested, they should try and see 
a book by the Abbe Breuil, a distinguished French- 
man who has made a special study of this work. 

We must pass on to a consideration of what pur- 
pose the drawings served. At Altamira, they are 
in a dark cave, which has a total length of 280 
metres; and a metre is about 3 feet 3^ inches. 

141 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

There is no light in the cave, and the figures occur 
over all the walls. They cannot be seen now with- 
out a light, and a lamp must have been used when 
they were painted; so we have another discovery, 
that man had artificial illumination in Aurignacian 
times. A dark cave, though, does not make a 
good picture gallery for display, and it does not seem 
as if the Cave were the National Galley of the day. 

Many suggestions have been made as to the uses 
of the paintings; one is that as most of the animals 
drawn are those which were hunted for food, the 
paintings formed a magic which placed the animals 
under the power of the medicine man of the tribe. 
Many of the animals are drawn with arrows sticking 
in their bodies; on some the heart is shown in red. 
This was a practice which lingered on till recent 
times — to make a model of your enemy and stick 
it full of pins; that is, if you were a spiteful person 
and wished him harm. 

The Aurignacians were accomplished sculptors 
and modelled quite good little figures in the round 
about four to five inches high, and as well in low 
relief. A curious detail is that the faces are not 
rendered; in their drawings and paintings, they 
seldom if ever presented the human figure, except 

14^ 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

occasionally by grotesque faces. This may have 
arisen from the fact that primitive people think 
that a picture or figure of a man becomes part of 
his personality. If damage be done to it, then it 
reacts on the man, so any recognizable portrait of 
an individual doubles his risks. In the case of 
the animals drawn this was desirable to the 
Aurignacian. 

Another suggestion is that the mammoth, the 
bison, or any of the animals drawn, might have 
been the Totem of the tribe; that they were 
grouped in clans, as the brothers of the bison per- 
haps. This, as we have seen, was a practice with 
the Australians, the Red Indians of America, and 
the boy scouts of to-day. The Altamira cave in 
this case would have been the temple in which were 
preserved totem symbols. One peculiarity at 
Altamira is that one drawing is frequently found 
made on the top of another. The interiors of the 
loftier caves must have first turned men's ideas in 
the direction of fine building; something which 
should be nobler than their little huts, and suitable 
for ceremonies. Imagine prehistoric man first 
finding his way into a cave, from the lofty roof of 
which hung down stalactites, like pendants to the 

143 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

fan vaulting of Henry the Seventh's Chapel at 
Westminster. The stalagmites like rising columns, 
and all the glittering points would have thrown back 
the light of his lamp. The cave originated the 
idea of building which we shall see later as Picts' 
houses, and at first must have been used as the 
tribal temples. In the painted caves of France and 
Spain are found the imprints of hands. A hand 
has evidently been smeared with colour, and then 
printed on to the surface of the rock or the hand 
placed there first, and then colour dusted over it, 
leaving a white silhouette when the hand was re- 
moved. Many of the hands show traces of mutila- 
tion ; that is, the end of a finger has been cut off at 
the joint. This dismal practice was widely spread 
and lasted until recent times. It was a form of 
sacrifice. It existed among the Australians, the 
Bushmen of South Africa, and some of the Red In- 
dians, for example, and was practised for a variety 
of causes, generally as a sign of grief, and to im- 
plore the better favour of the gods in future. It 
seems reasonable, then, to suppose that the Au- 
rignacian people lost the fingers, which must have 
been so useful to them, in some such way. 

The Aurignacian women, and perhaps the men 

144 




Fig. 50. — Perfor- 
ated Wolfs Fang, 
from Ivinghoe 
Beacon. 





B 




Fig. 51. — Solutrean Flints. 



Fig. 53. — Chancelade Man. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

as well, appear to have been fond of trying to make 
themselves beautiful. Here in Great Britain, at 
Paviland Cave in Wales, were found perforated 
wolves' teeth for use as a necklace, and an ivory 
bracelet made by sawing rings through the hollow 
base of a mammoth's tusk. Fig. 50 shows a wolf's 
tooth from Ivinghoe Beacon. We can also be quite 
sure that so gifted a people as the Aurignacians 
must have experimented in the production of 
music. We know that they had bows and arrows. 
The twang of the bow led to our piano. The latter 
is only a harp on its side, the strings of which are 
struck with hammers instead of plucked with the 
fingers, and the harp is the bow with many strings; 
the reed and pipe would lead to the horn, and the 
drum has always been the great instrument of the 
native musician. At Alpera, in Spain, are some 
wonderful paintings of late Palaeolithic date, and 
here are shown figures of women who seem to be 
dancing. Now dancing means some sort of music, 
and the cheerful tum-tum of a drum is almost 
necessary if one is to keep time. In the original 
Alpera drawings are figures which appear to be 
wearing quaint head-dresses; perhaps this was a 
masquerade. If all this sounds improbable, re- 

147 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

member their wonderful drawings; to such people 
much is possible. Dancing has always been an 
accomplishment of savage people. Darwin wrote 
of a "corrobery," or dancing party, of the 
aborigines in Australia, held at night by the light 
of fires, the women and children squatting round 
as spectators. An **Emu dance, in which each 
man extended his arm in a bent manner, like the 
neck of that bird. In another dance, one man 
imitated the movements of a kangaroo grazing in 
the woods whilst a second crawled up and pre- 
tended to spear him." In this way they 
dramatized their everyday life. 

SOLUTREAN MaN 

The next division of the Upper Palaeolithic is 
the one which the archaeologists have named the 
Solutrean, after Solutre, near Macon (Saone-et- 
Loire) in France. Solutrean man appears to have 
lived in England because evidences of his industry 
have been found at Paviland Cave in South Wales, 
and Cresswell Crags, Derbyshire; as well as in 
France, Central Europe, and the North of Spain, 
but not in Italy. The Solutreans may have been 

148 




Fig. 52. — Making of Bone Needles. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

horse hunters who invaded Europe along the open 
grasslands of the Loess. It has been assumed 
that they were a warlike race, because of the 
very beautiful flint lance-heads which have been 
found; some of these are like an assegai, and would 
have been deadly weapons (Fig. 51). They are 
beautifully flaked flints, shaped like a laurel leaf, 
from which they get their name (pointe enfeuille 
de laurier) ; the smaller types like a willow leaf, and 
so called {pointe enfeuille de saule), B shows the 
highest Palaeolithic development of flint flaking, 
the pointe a cran, or shouldered point, by which a 
primitive barb was formed. C is an arrow-head 
with a flint tang which could be bound on to the 
shaft. 

Flint flaking came to its highest point of de- 
velopment in the Old Stone Age in Solutrean times, 
though it was to revive again later in the New 
Stone, or Neolithic Age. The Solutreans made 
borers, scrapers, and arrow-heads; they, in fact, 
carried on the traditions of the Aurignacians ; bone 
and ivory were used; and painting and drawing 
continued. Perhaps the most wonderful develop- 
ment of this time was the bone needle; at the begin- 
ning the sewing had been done in the same way 

151 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

that a shoemaker sews the sole of a shoe now, by 
boring a hole with a bone awl, and then passing a 
thread through. Of course, the Aurignacians had 
not any thread, but must have used fine sinews in 
this way. The next step was to hook the end of 
the awl so that the sinew could be pulled through, 
using the awl first to pierce the hole, and then as a 
crochet-needle to pull the thread through. The 
final step was to combine the two operations into 
one by the use of the needle, which pierced the hole, 
and carried the thread through itseK (see A, B, and 
C, Fig. 52). To realize the joy of a Solutrean 
woman who first used a needle, let us imagine our- 
selves sewing to-day like a shoemaker, punching 
holes one at a time. 

Fig. 52 shows a Solutrean needlemaker at work; 
first she cut a splinter of bone out of reindeer horn, 
as at 1. This was done by cutting a groove on 
each side with a flint graving tool, as at 2. The 
splinter was then shaved down with a scraper, as 3, 
and polished with a piece of stone, as 4, and the 
eye bored with a flint borer, as 5. You can see at 
the British Museum, the actual needles and the 
implements with which they were made, and it is 
worth a ^nsit to see these. A sewing machine is 

152 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

a mechanically operated needle. At the British 
Museum you can see the start of the whole long 
business which led up to the sewing machine. 
Magdalenian women later on used hollow bones as 
needle-cases. 

Though the Fourth Glacial period was now long 
past and the weather was gradually becoming more 
temperate, it did not improve in a regular way. 
The weather was colder than in Aurignacian times, 
and the mammoth and reindeer were still found in 
Europe. 

Magdalenian Man 

We can now pass on to the Magdalenian men, 
who succeeded the Solutreans. The typical station 
of the industry is on the Vezere, not far from the 
Castle of La Madeleine, hence the name. The 
Solutrean excelled in flint flaking, and the tool and 
the implement he made of it were both in this ma- 
terial. The Magdalenian used flint for his 
scrapers, borers, and gravers and finished them 
roughly. For the implements he made, he pre- 
ferred bone and ivory. This detail at first may 
not seem of much importance, in reality it is as 
vital as if to-day we gave up steel and concrete and 

153 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

started using some new material. Flint was to 
have a wonderful renaissance in Neolithic times, 
later on, before it slowly gave way to bronze. In 
many ways the Magdalenians appear to have been 
the descendants of the Aurignacians. 

Magdalenian man appears to have been widely 
distributed over Europe. At Altamira, in Spain, 
he added the masterpieces of painting to the earlier 
drawings of the Aurignacians. He lived in France, 
Germany, and Belgium, and in England his 
handiwork has been found at Kent's Hole in 
Devon, and Cresswell Crags in Derbyshire. We 
are so anchored nowadays, with our houses to live 
in, and farms to raise foodstuffs, that it is difficult 
to realize this widespread distribution of prehis- 
toric man, but in reality he needed far larger areas 
of land on which to hunt and find food. Prof. 
Sollas has an extremely interesting chapter in his 
book Ancient Hunters, in which he sums up the 
evidence of what Magdalenian man was like. So 
far as can be judged there were two types, the tall 
Cro-Magnons, and a shorter race like the Eskimos 
of to-day. A skeleton of the former was found 
again in the Vezere at Laugerie-Basse, Dordogne, 
in France, which had been buried in a contracted 

154 





Fig. 54, — Spears and Harpoons 



Fig, 56. — Framework of Kayak. 





Fig. 58. — Eskimo Game. 



Fig. 57. — Eskimo Bladder Dart, 
Harpoon and Bird Dart. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

position with knees drawn up. Cowrie shells were 
found with the bones, and it is thought must have 
been sewn on to the clothing of the body, which 
was probably fully clothed when buried. 

In 1888, another skeleton was found on the banks 
of the Beauronne, near Perigueux, Chancelade. It 
was of a shorter man than the Cro-Magnon, in 
many ways like the Combe Capelle type, the 
skull large and like those of the Eskimos to-day, 
with a ridge along the top. The head dolichoce- 
phalic and extraordinarily high. Fig. 53 gives 
some idea of the appearance of the Chancelade 
man. It has been suggested that he was the 
ancestor of the Eskimo, and was gradually pushed 
out of the fertile regions by the new race of men 
who came in Neolithic times, later on. 

The climate was improving, and the Ice Age 
receding as a distant memory. The reindeer and 
mammoth were going north, and the Chancelade 
men, as hunters perhaps, followed their tracks, and 
so left the way open for the herdsmen and farmers 
who were to follow. 

Magdalenian man made his spear and arrow- 
heads in ivory and reindeer horn; these were 
spliced on to wooden shafts and consisted of long 

157 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

lance-like points (as 1, Fig. 54). From these de- 
veloped harpoons, first with one row of barbs, and 
then with two, as 2 and 3. This was a most useful 
discovery, that the barb would hold a fish after it 
had been speared; one can imagine the disgust of 
the early fisherman who lost his catch off the plain 
lance; his joy when he held it on the barbed 
harpoon. The first good fisherman's tale must 
have started with some such exploit. Spearing 
fish sounds a little unreal to-day, but there is an 
interesting account in Sir Walter Scott's Red- 
gauntlet, of sport carried on in this way on horse- 
back. "They chased the fish at full gallop, and 
struck them with their barbed spears." The 
scene is laid in the estuary of the Solway at low 
water, when the "waters had receded from the 
large and level space of sand, through which a 
stream, now feeble and fordable, found its way to 
the ocean." Magdalenian man must have had 
many a good day's sport like this. Out of the 
barb of the harpoon, the fish-hook must have de- 
veloped. All this was possible in bone, though an 
impossibility in flint. Bone lends itself to decora- 
tion, and so the Magdalenian incised simple designs 
on his lance-heads. Smaller bone points have been 

158 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

found which suggest arrow-heads, but no bows. 
These being wooden would have decayed. This 
influence of material on design is very important; 
it is a very false and bad art which wastes ma- 
terial or tortures it into a shape which is unsuitable, 
so these early Magdalenians were proper designers, 
in that they used their material in a right way. 
The harpoons show them to have been fishermen 
and there are Magdalenian drawings of seal and 
salmon engraved on stone. One expects that the 
rivers then would have been like those in Western 
Canada to-day, where the salmon come up from 
the sea in tremendous quantities. 

Nos. 3a and 4 (Fig. 54) show another interesting 
development of the harpoon. Magdalenian speci- 
mens have been found with a movable head, and 
this suggests that they were used in the same way 
as the harpoons of the Eskimos. No. 5 is our sug- 
gestion of how the fish-hook developed out of the 
barb of the harpoon. As there are many other points 
of resemblance between the Eskimo and the Mag- 
dalenians, we will see if any useful comparisons 
can be drawn. 

The Eskimos are very widely distributed, as they 
must be, because they live by hunting. They de- 

161 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

pend on the seal, whale, and walrus for food and 
clothing, and these they hunt all along the Arctic 
coasts from Greenland to Alaska. They are a 
very gifted pleasant people, who have not any idea 
of war, because their main concern is a struggle 
for existence amidst ice and snow. They do not 
work iron, though in later days they have made 
use of any pieces which they could get hold of from 
traders. The Eskimo works in bone and wood in 
a really wonderful way, as we shall see. He also 
appears to have inherited the skill of the Mag- 
dalenian in drawing. Dr. Nansen writes of an 
Eskimo from Cape York, who "took a pencil, a 
thing he had never seen before, and sketched the 
coastline along Smith's Sound from his birthplace 
northwards with astonishing accuracy." 

We will start with their methods of hunting. 
Seals are speared at blow-holes in the ice, but far 
more interesting are the methods by which they 
are harpooned in the open summer seas. The 
Eskimo then uses his kayak; this is a boat as Fig. 
55, which varies somewhat in the various districts, 
but in all is constructed on the same principle. On 
the west coast of Greenland it is about seventeen 
feet long, and made of driftwood on a frame as Fig. 

162 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

56, which is all bound together with thongs, and 
covered with sealskin. The kayak is decked over, 
and paddled with a double-bladed paddle. If we 
assume that the early Magdalenians were as clever 
as the Australians, and first made a bark canoe as 
Fig. 39, they would have found, as they left the 
rivers and ventured to sea, that the deck was an 
improvement. The harpoon with movable ' ead 
(as 4, Fig. 54) suggests that they did go to sea and 
attacked some larger quarry than the salmon. If 
they harpooned the seal with No. 3, the first con- 
vulsive plunge would have snapped off the head, 
and this was a precious possession. The head was 
made then to fit into a bone holder on the end of 
the lance, so that when the seal dived he wrenched 
it out of the holder only to find that it was still 
attached to the shaft by a leather thong. The 
Eskimo uses two harpoons, which are very beauti- 
ful developments of this idea. 

No. 1, Fig. 57, shows their bladder dart. The 
head is removable and attached by a thong to 
the centre of the shaft, where in addition they 
fix a blown-up bladder. When the seal dives 
he is encumbered by the shaft, which is at 
right angles to the thong, and the bladder, which 

163 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

also marks his position when he comes to the 
surface. 

No. 2 shows the Eskimo harpoon. This had in 
old days an ivory head, tipped with flint, fitted on 
to a bone shaft. This latter is protected from 
snapping, by being attached to the wooden shaft 
with thongs in a sort of ball and socket joint. The 
line is attached to the ivory head, and then passes 
over a stud on the harpoon shaft; the loose line is 
carried on a holder on the kayak in front of the 
Eskimo, and the end is attached to a large sealskin 
float which rests at his back. The harpoon is 
thrown with a thrower in the same way that the 
Australian hurls his spears (Figs. 34 and 35). The 
head of the harpoon buries itseK in the seal, and is 
so attached to the line that it turns at right angles 
in the wound. It is at once wrenched off the bone 
shaft, and the position of the seal is noted by the 
float which is thrown overboard. The wooden 
shaft floats and is picked up. 

As there are many very beautiful ivory or bone 
harpoon-throwers of Magdalenian times, it seems 
fair to assume that the seal was hunted then as it 
is by the Eskimos to-day. 

No. 3, Fig. 57, shows the bird-dart which is 

164 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

thrown with a thrower. The forward projecting 
barbs kill the bird if the actual point misses. All 
these weapons are carried by the Eskimos on the 
deck of the kayak, neatly fitted under thongs and 
ivory studs. 

The Eskimo's clothing is of sealskin, and his 
coat is arranged to fit closely around the circular 
rim of the hole in the deck in which he sits. He 
can be tumbled right over by a rough sea, and yet 
right himself with a turn of the paddle. 

The Magdalenian had bone needles, and his 
clothing may have been like this. 

At the British Museum there is a sledge made of 
driftwood, with bone platings on the runners, all 
tied up with thongs. It should be seen to realize 
how primitive man manages without nails and 
screws. As well there are kayaks and a model of 
the umiak or women's boat. Fig. 58 shows an 
Eskimo game played rather like cup and ball. A 
very much simplified Polar bear is carved in ivory 
and pierced with many holes; the bear has to be 
caught through one of the holes on the end of the 
stick. 

The boring of holes brings up the question of 
whether Magdalenian man used the bow-drill. 

165 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

Small ivory rods have been found, perforated at 
one end, with a slit at the other shaped into a 
mouth. This is thought to have been the bow. 
The bowstring was tied through the hole at one 
end, given a twist round the drill, and the bow then 
being bent, a loop in the bowstring was slipped 
into the notched end of the bow, and kept the 
latter bent. Our cut (Fig. 47) shows how the drill 
could then be rotated. Such drills are used by 
the Eskimos, and many other primitive people 
to-day, both to bore holes and produce fire by 
friction. 

Drawings have been discovered which are thought 
to represent tents or huts, and suggest that the 
Magdalenians had improved on those of the Au- 
rignacians, as shown in Fig. 44. This round bee- 
hive form, made perhaps of willow withies, would 
have been weak in the crown, if the tent was of any 
size, yet it could be constructed very simply any- 
where that saplings were found. One of the Mag- 
dalenian drawings suggests a type, as Fig. 59. 
Almost all the early hut builders seem to have dug 
a hole in the ground of circular shape. The earth 
removed was heaped up round the outside. In 
the centre of the hole a roof tree was set up, formed 

166 




Fig. 59. — Type of Huts suggested by Magdalenian drawings 




4k^ 



Fig. 60. — Type of Huts suggested by Magdalenian drawings. 




Fig. 61. —Eskimo Summer Tent. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

of the trunk of a tree, with a fork perhaps left at 
the top. Around this sapHngs were placed, their 
feet stuck into the surrounding mound, with the 
tops leaning against the roof tree. These formed 
the rafters, and if in between these were interlaced 
smaller boughs, it is quite easy to see that the whole 
could be covered with skins or rough grass thatch. 
Quite a comfortable little house could be made in 
this way, and we know that it is a type which was 
general in Neolithic times. 

Other Magdalenian drawings suggest a type, as 
Fig. 60, and this is a form of hut which is con- 
structed by the North American Indians. 

The Magdalenians had their winter quarters in 
caves and rock shelters and the period is named 
after the cave of La Madeleine on the banks of 
the Vezere. Did Magdalenian man, as he slowly 
travelled to the north, take with him a memory of 
the rock shelters of France, and hand down a build- 
ing tradition to the Eskimos of to-day? They 
have very interesting rock houses, and others 
which are constructed in a skilful way with blocks 
of snow. Stone lamps have been discovered, which 
suggest that the Magdalenian not only lighted 
but warmed his houses, as the Eskimo does to- 

169 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

day, by burning fat in a stone lamp with a moss 
wick. 

Fig. 61 shows the skin tent which the Eskimo 
uses on his summer wanderings. The plan re- 
sembles that of the houses; there is the semicircular 
bed-place at A, and a central gangway at B, with 
cooking pots at the sides at C. The diagram show^s 
how the tent is made with poles and covered with 
skins, the front portion being of membrane to 
admit light. Large stones serve to hold down the 
skins. We have included these drawings because 
we want to get as many representative types as we 
can of primitive dwelling-places. We shall find it 
useful later on. 

The Magdalenian, like the Eskimo, may have 
used his lamp for cooking, but here is an interesting 
description by Darwin of a Tahitian who prepared 
a meal in another way: "Having made a small fire 
of sticks, placed a score of stones, of about the size 
of cricket balls, on the burning wood. In about 
ten minutes, the sticks were consumed, and the 
stones hot. They had previously folded up in 
small parcels of leaves, pieces of beef, fish, ripe 
and unripe bananas, and the tops of the wild arum. 
These green parcels were laid in a layer between 

170 





Fig. 64. — Grazing Reindeer, engraved on a round bone. 



'iG. 62. — Digging-stick. 




Fig. 65. — Deer crossing a Stream, engraved on a round bone. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

two layers of the hot stones, and the whole then 
covered up with earth, so that no smoke or steam 
could escape. In about a quarter of an hour, the 
whole was most deliciously cooked." This was a 
method used in Neolithic times later on. The 
Magdalenians may have used the reindeer for food 
in the winter, by drying the flesh over a wood fire, 
and then pounding it up, and preserving it by pour- 
ing over hot fat, rather like the pemmican of the 
Indian and Eskimo. 

We cannot be sure whether the Magdalenians 
had started cultivating the soil. Perforated stones 
have been found which may have been used to 
load the digging-stick, as Fig. 62. This is the 
method the Bushmen adopt, and Darwin men- 
tioned the use of the digging-stick in Chile, to dig 
up roots, though this does not mean cultivating 
them. 

The Magdalenian period marked the highest de- 
velopment of the art of prehistoric man. The 
paintings are of astonishing merit; without being 
great sticklers for detail, these old painters caught 
the very spirit of the animals they painted. The 
mammoth swings along alive from the tip of his 
trunk to the end of his tufted tail. The bison and 

173 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

boar charge; the reindeer and red deer move in a 
slow, easy canter. The drawings are proof of the 
immensely developed power of detailed observa- 
tion which came to the hunter as part of his craft, 
and which is different to the sympathy shown in 
later days, when animals were domesticated. Fig. 
63 shows a Magdalenian painting of a boar, and the 
frontispiece. Fig. 1, a bison, from the Altamira Cave. 

The artists of those days used reds and browns, 
blacks and yellows, and were adepts at producing 
high lights, half-tones, and shadow. They appear 
to have started with a black outline, and then to 
have fitted in the body of the work, adding tone, 
or wiping away colour to get the effect of lights. 
The figures are often of life size, and their vigour 
makes us wish that we could draw animals in such 
a living way. 

M. Daleau has found in France, red oxide of iron, 
which formed the basis of one of the colours, the 
pestles with which it was ground, and the shoulder 
blades of animals that served as palettes. Brushes 
were used, and would not have been difficult to 
make. The paints were carried in little tubes 
made of reindeer horn; truly there is nothing new 
under the sun, and we shall find some day, per- 

174 




Fig. 63. — Magdalenian Cave Painting. 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

haps, a catalogue of a Magdalenian artists' colour- 
man. We have said that these old painters caught 
the very spirit of the animals they drew, and to do 
this they realized that it was necessary to compose, 
or design, their shapes and outlines. To-day we 
can snapshot a horse while galloping, and the re- 
sulting photograph will not convey the sense of 
action that the Palseolithic artist has obtained in 
Fig. 63. This is because the human eye cannot 
record movement with the rapidity of the lens of a 
camera. The artist realizes this, and presents in- 
stead a convention, or design, which we find more 
real than the reality of the photograph. 

The Magdalenian engravings on ivory, some- 
times on the handles of their shaft-straighteners, 
were just as wonderful as the paintings. There is 
one in the British Museum from La Madeleine, of 
a mammoth which is splendid in its vigour. Figs. 
64 and G5 are fine examples of engraving on bone. 
Fig. Q6, of an ivory dagger at the British Museum, 
shows that Magdalenian man could carve in the 
round, as well as cut an incised line. Fig. 67 shows 
a harpoon-thrower, the use of which was described. 
Remember that all the engraving and carving was 
done with flint implements. 

177 



ii6 Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

The drawings and engravings convince us that 
the artists knew the animals, and that their work 
was actual life-drawing; in this way we can find 
that among the Magdalenian animals were mam- 
moth, reindeer, and the great Irish deer, the bison 
and horse, the musk ox, glutton, and Arctic hare. 
These show that the climate was for some part of 
the Magdalenian period colder than in Aurignacian 
times. 

The illustrations we have given are suiBScient to 
prove that the Magdalenians were a very highly 
gifted race. These people were becoming civilized, 
and they were artists, and so would have been 
pleasant and friendly. We cannot say how they 
said "How do you do " to one another; perhaps like 
the New Zealanders they rubbed noses. Darwin 
when he went there wrote: "They then squatted 
themselves down and held up their faces; my com- 
panion standing over them, one after another, 
placed the bridge of his nose at right angles to 
theirs, and commenced pressing. This lasted 
rather longer than a cordial shake of the hand with 
us; and as we vary the force of the grasp of the 
hand in shaking so they do in pressing. During 
the process they uttered comfortable little grunts." 

178 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

To sum up, if it is correct that certain bone rods 
which have been found at Aurignacian stations in 
France are the bows of bow-drills, as Fig. 47, then 
this must be noted as another very considerable 
step forward. It is obvious that the Aurignacians 
must have had some ready method for drilling 
their shaft-straighteners as Fig. 46. The bow- 
drill led to the modern lathe. We shall see that 
in later times the people knew how to turn quite 
well, and it is probable that they used a type of the 
primitive pole lathe. In this the rotary movement 
was conveyed, to the article to be turned, by a rope 
which was passed around it in the same way that 
the bowstring was applied to the drill to turn it. 
The potter's wheel, which again follows later on, 
is descended from the bow-drill. 

At the end of the third chapter we suggested 
that man, at first only concerned with food, had 
begun to realize that there was a spiritual side to 
his nature. In Magdalenian times we find the 
manifestations of this in an appreciation of beauty; 
there were artists in those days. 

Now Art is a much maligned word; it really 
means doing things, whereas science is knowing 
things. People nowadays think of an artist as a 

179 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

painter; we should like to define that individual 
as any man, or woman, who puts more into a job 
of work than they expect to take out of it; the 
business man is one who wants to take out a little 
more than he puts in. 

We should like to point out that an engineer may 
be a very good artist. A fine motor-ear is a work 
of Art; it has Beauty of form, and is designed with 
Truth, or it would not do its job, so that it possesses 
two of the great qualities; there remains only 
Goodness. It therefore follows that no man can 
do fine work unless he has some appreciation of 
the underlying principles on which humanity has 
built itself up. At the very worst he can only be 
one third bad, so credit must be given to the artists 
of all kinds. 

We like to think that good work has been one of 

the prime factors in the civilization of man, and we 

believe that dull mechanical work destroys the 

brain. If this is so, what of the poor factory hand 

of to-day, chained to the machine as its slave .^ It 

is not possible for him to dream dreams, or see 

visions; the utmost limit of his, or her, endeavour, 

is, perhaps, to watch an automatic machine making 

nuts, each an exact counterpart of its fellow. 

180 



Artists of the Old Stone Age 

We wonder, when our turn comes to be dug up 
and have our skulls measured, say in 5000 a.d., if 
the archaeologists of that far-away to-morrow will 
say, Here was a people who threw away their herit- 
age, and arrested their development, because they 
lost the use of their hands. 

But so far as our friends the Magdalenians are 
concerned, judged by their work they had made 
great advances, and, like the Eskimos whom they so 
closely resembled, must have been a pleasant people. 



181 



CHAPTER V 

THE END OF THE OLD STONE AGE 

The Azilians, who followed after the Magdale- 
nians, were the last people of the Old Stone Age. 
After this we come to Neolithic times, or the New 
Stone Age. The Azilians, like all these early peoples, 
were widely distributed, and traces of their handi- 
work have been found as far apart as the cave of 
Mas d'Azil, Ariege, near Lourdes in the south of 
France, and Sevenoaks and Hastings in England, 
and Oban in Scotland. The Scottish discoveries 
of harpoons are very interesting. It shows that the 
ice was retreating, and man making his way into 
the tracts of the newly uncovered land. 

We know what some of the Azilians were like 
because they had a curious habit of removing the 
heads from the bodies of their dead and burying 
the skulls like eggs in nests. At the Of net Cave, 
near Nordlingen, Bavaria, South Germany, 
twenty-seven were found together buried in red 
ochre . This would suggest that the Azilians used to 

182 




Fig. 66. — Magdalenian Carved Ivory Dagger. 




Fig. 68. — Round-headed 
Ofnet Man. 







Fig. 70. — Azilian 
Painted Stones. 



Fig. 69. — Long-headed 
Ofnet Man. 



FlQ. 67.— Magdalen- 
ian Carved Ivory 
Harpoon-thrower. 



The End of the Old Stone Age 

paint their bodies in their Uf etime, and so the colour 
was buried with them for use in the spirit world. 
One skull of a small child had many shells placed 
near it — perhaps as play-things. Round another 
was a chaplet of deer's teeth, and all were placed 
in the same way, looking westward. The actual 
bodies were probably consumed by fire; later on 
cremation was a usual method, the ashes being 
buried in an urn. 

Here is a new fact; most of the old races we have 
been writing about were long-headed (dolicho- 
cephalic) ; we now find side by side with this type, 
brachycephalic, or a rounder-headed people. The 
fact that individuals of the two races were buried 
in the same grave points to their having lived to- 
gether happily. So that if some Magdalenians 
moved north after the mammoth and the reindeer, 
others remained behind. 

Our drawing (Fig. 68) has been made from the 
rounder-headed Ofnet skull. Fig. 69 is of the 
longer-headed type. 

We do not find any beautiful paintings in this 
period. Man was beginning to look on animals 
from a diflFerent point of view. In the old days 
he had the hunter's eye, quick to note beauty of 

185 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

body and grace of movement, which he expressed in 
drawings; in Azilian days he may have begun to 
look on himself as a herdsman, though so far only 
the dog was domesticated. The climate was 
milder, with westerly winds and warm rains; the 
waters were rising. Great Britain was an island, 
and great forests spread over the land, except where 
the Loess lay thick, and by fineness prevented 
the trees from taking root. Man, who had been 
free to roam over the tundra, was now hemmed in, 
so the old care-free life passed away, and he began 
to have possessions. 

These had to be useful, and we do not find anv 
cunning work in ivory. The awl takes the place 
of the needle. Flint is revived for making imple- 
ments, but in a rougher way than those of Solu- 
trean times. Stag horn is used for harpoons instead 
of reindeer, so the Azilians also were fishermen. 

The most interesting things which they have left 
behind them are the painted stones found at Mas 
d'Azil. These are flattish in shape, about two 
inches across, and painted with signs, as Fig. 70. 
Some of them are surprisingly like early forms of 
letters — red and black were used. The use to 
which these stones were put is unknown, but they 

186 



The End of the Old Stone Age 

may have been tallies or accounts. If to-day you 
ask a labouring man to cart bricks or tiles, and 
keep count, he will do so in tens. These he chalks 
up on the bam door, and obtains his hundreds by 
ten tens. So these stones may have been tokens 
or tallies used by Azihan man in keeping the ac- 
counts of his trade by barter. We can be quite 
sure that some sort of trade had been in exist- 
ence even long before this time. We have seen on 
p. 155 how cowrie shells were found with the Cro- 
Magnon type of skeleton at Laugerie-Basse. Four 
were near the head, and two at each elbow, knee, 
and foot. They must have been sewn on the 
clothing. These would have come from the Medi- 
terranean, and would have been rarities in the 
centre of France. The chiefs would have desired 
them on the principle that fine feathers, or shells, 
make fine birds, or men. So perhaps skins or 
harpoons were given in exchange. Don't be 
amused at these simple folk, because the exchange 
of commodities still remains as the basis of our 
trade, and we use money or bills of exchange as 
tallies or tokens. Life was becoming easier, and 
was perhaps not so much of a desperate struggle 
for survival as it had been. 

187 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

The Glacial Period had receded into the past, 
and the climate was temperate. Whereas in 
Magdalenian times the countryside had the ap- 
pearance of the Arctic tundra where the Eski- 
mos now live, in Azilian times it became well 
wooded. 

Before we leave the painted stones, we must 
draw attention to the fact that some of the mark- 
ings are very much like Roman letters. From this 
some archaeologists have argued that the stones 
were the text-books from which Azilian boys 
learned their ABC. This is a tremendous flight 
of imagination, and a short cut indeed at the same 
time. We feel that the Roman letter had to wait 
for thousands of years yet before it arrived at the 
character we know now. Turn the subject over 
in your mind, and think how prehistoric man con- 
veyed information or asked for it. Our early 
friend, the Java sub-man, had rudimentary powers 
of speech; he progressed as a baby does now. Our 
own very youngest brother learns to say "bread," 
because his small brain teaches him that this is 
what the grown-ups call the stuflF which is so pleasant 
to eat; speech comes first, then letters. All letters 
seem to have started as pictures. We know pre- 

188 



The End of the Old Stone Age 

historic man could draw splendidly; if he met a 
man who did not understand his own language, he 
would naturally draw the thing he desired to ob- 
tain. We remember once buying a goose in Wales, 
from an old lady who spoke only Welsh, which we 
did not understand. We pointed to the goose, 
and by signs conveyed the idea that we wished to 
buy it. We then in the same way invited her to 
take as much money from our hand as she desired; 
but we wished her to kill, draw, and deliver the 
bird in time for dinner the next day, at a farm some 
miles away. So to the great delight of the old lady 
we drew pictures of the doom and journey ings of 
the goose, and in due course we dined off it; but 
this would be a very laborious method for all the 
actions of everyday life. The drawings then were 
standardized and simplified and in time became 
letters, and our old ABC, like everything else, 
has behind it a history stretching out across the 
horizons into the very beginnings of time it- 
seK. Our readers will know Kipling's delightful 
tale of How the Alphabet was made, in *'Just So 
Stories." 

The probable Azilian deposits at Oban were 
found in a cave opening on to a sea-beach. Prof. 

189 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

Sollas mentions the fact that in a beach at Glasgow, 
which corresponds in age with the one at Oban, no 
less than eighteen dug-out canoes have been dis- 
covered/ These may have belonged to Azilian 
man. On the rocky floor of the cave at Oban were 
successive deposits: first a pebbly gravel washed 
in by high tides, then a bed of shells, then gravel, 
and on top of this another shell-bed with a final 
topping of black earth, formed in later ages. The 
level of the land has gone up, perhaps as it lost its 
tremendous load of ice, or that of the sea gone 
down, because the cave is now some thirty feet 
above the sea-level. 

In the shell-beds are shells of oysters, limpets, 
whelks, the claws of lobsters, the bones of large 
sea fish, red deer, goat, pig, and many other 
animals. Ashes remain where the cooking hearths 
were. From all these remains we can be quite 
sure that Azilian man was both fisherman and 
hunter, and the bones of the large sea fish mean 
that he took his harpoon to sea, in some form of 
canoe, or boat, covered with skins. 

Man about this time seems to have been drawn 
more and more to the water. In Norway and 
Sweden, Azilian remains have been found which 

190 



The End of the Old Stone Age 

point to dwellings built on enormous rafts an- 
chored in lakes. All sorts of implements fell 
through the logs of which the rafts were composed, 
and have since been discovered in the peat which 
has formed in the old lake beds. Flint imple- 
ments were used, and harpoons, spear-heads, and 
fish-hooks. The bones of dogs have been found, 
and it is thought this proves that they were 
domesticated by the Azilians. 

We do not know why man should have chosen 
such strange homes for himself and his family; 
probably fear drove him there, but he had now no 
foes to fear like the sabre-toothed tiger. That 
fierce animal had long since gone; perhaps it was 
the most terrible foe of all, his fellow-man, of equal 
cunning with himself, and far more subtle than the 
clumsy mammoth, that compelled him to take 
refuge on the water. We shall see how in Neo- 
lithic times he built the Lake Dwellings on piles, 
and lived over the water, as he does to-day in New 
Guinea. If at about this time the dog became the 
friend of man, then again this marks another very 
notable step, and it would be extremely interest- 
ing to know how the long friendship began. Kip- 
ling in the "Just So Stories" gives us an idea. It 

191 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

IS a proof of great intelligence on the part of pre- 
historic man, because the dog would have been 
as useful an ally as fire and flint, as well as being 
an excellent companion. It is almost impossible 
for us to imagine a world to-day with only wild 
dogs and wolves in it. 

We wanted to sum up the general impressions to be 
gathered from the life of prehistoric man, and the 
dog gives us the opportunity of doing so, by show- 
ing the difference that he made to man when they 
became friends. 

We have seen that the most urgent need of pre- 
historic man was food; that as he had not domesti- 
cated any of the animals, except the dog, and did 
not grow any corn, he had to hunt to live, and was 
a wanderer because he followed the game. When 
the dog came as a friend, he brought an even 
keener sense of smell than that of prehistoric man, 
and so could follow the trail; at the same time he 
would have simplified the task of stalking the 
animals. It was necessary to get within the 
limited range of a spear thrown by hand, before 
prehistoric man could kill his supper, and the dog 
would have helped by dri^dng the game towards 
the hunter. 

192 



The End of the Old Stone Age 

With a more acute sense of hearing, the dog 
would have given prehistoric man the feeHng of 
security which he so badly needed. The man 
would have been afraid of so many things; the 
nasty little noises of the night would have alarmed 
him so much more than the howling of wolves which 
he knew; there was the constant dread of magic 
and evil spirits. Prehistoric man then, crouching 
at the side of his camp-fire, looked out into encircl- 
ing gloom and saw the firelight reflected in the eyes 
of wild animals with more assurance when he had 
the dog beside him for a friend; if the supper had 
to be shared, the dangers seemed to be halved. 

If we go back and think of the other things we 
have written about, we must bear in mind that the 
ancient hunters were helped in their wanderings 
by a differently shaped Europe to the one we know 
today. The isthmuses at Sicily, Gibraltar, and 
Dover, not only led to wide wanderings on the part 
of Palaeolithic man, but opened the way for inter- 
esting migration of animals. The Southern types 
could come North, and the Northern go South if 
need be. 

Great climatic changes, like the Ice Ages, played 
their part in man's development, by adding the 

193 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

stern necessity of altering his mode of life, if he 
wished to survive. We look back on a Europe of 
those days, as on a broad but dimly lighted stage. 
Across it pass the huge E. antiquus, the hippo, and 
sabre-toothed tiger, later come the mammoth and 
reindeer, with hysenas, lions, and bears; and man 
moves among them and seems to have changed 
least of any. 

Mr. Crawford, in his book Man and his Past, 
has taken an idea from Samuel Butler's Life and 
Habit, and applied it to prehistoric man; it amounts 
to this, that man by the use of tools has added 
limbs to himself. He rides a bicycle to-day and, 
by the use of gears, progresses as rapidly as if he 
had as many legs as a centipede. A flint implement 
was as useful to prehistoric man as another hand. 

No animal uses tools; they will use beak, claw, 
and tail as tools, which is a different matter. Man 
then, in times of great changes, was not called 
upon to alter his own body, to suit the altered cir- 
cumstances. The animal does this, or rather in 
many generations, and at the cost of countless 
lives, it is done, or, as in the case of the great 
reptiles, the type becomes extinct. The weather 
becoming colder, the animal will gradually de- 

194 



The End of the Old Stone Age 

velop and grow a thicker coat, but man, with his 
tool, makes himself one quickly, and so leaves 
time to do all sorts of other things as well. 

In using his tools, man was worried and made to 
think; his brain and soul, chained up in the clumsy 
body, were stimulated by this endeavour to do 
work. It is this tool-using habit of man, and all 
that it means, which makes the early flint imple- 
ments so interesting; the hand-axes and scrapers, 
the borers and burins, have been prime factors in 
civilization, and their utility has many times 
meant the difference between life and death to 
whole races. 

Then we have the tremendous revelation of 
Magdalenian art, blazing up in the middle of the 
Stone Age, and then the flame being extinguished; 
how did this come about? In any summary of the 
Old Stone Age, there is always this problem to be 
thought of. 

It was the tools of prehistoric man which made 
possible the beginnings of so many other things. 
The harpoon must have been used from some sort 
of boat or canoe. The huts have developed into 
our houses; the perforated wolf's fangs, or cowrie 
shells, strung together as a necklet, and the hollow 

195 



Everyday Life in the Old Stone Age 

base of a mammoth's tusk sawn off as a bracelet, 
led the way for all the other people who wanted 
to make themselves beautiful. Bone needles made 
fine sewing and embroidery possible; all this is 
part and parcel of archaeology, and there still 
remains plenty to do. 

Archaeology is like the design of a Roman pave- 
ment, built up of many small fragments, or tesserae. 
The main design is beginning to be known, but 
many of the details are missing. It is for this 
reason that research work goes on; that camps are 
dug over, and ancient cities uncovered. Many 
months' work may result in just one small piece of 
new knowledge. The archaeologist is delighted, 
and tells all his friends, and the little new tessera 
is fitted into its place in the larger pattern; but 
first it is tested in all ways, to see that it really 
fits, because these people are learned, and jealous 
that before any addition is made it shall be real 
knowledge. 

If this book has given any of our readers any 
idea of even the outline of the pattern of this know- 
ledge, we shall be very happy, because they cair^: 
then start serious work on their own account. !W/6 
can then pass on to how Neolithic man carried on, 

196 



i 



The End of the Old Stone Age 

his everyday life, which will be the subject of our 
next book. And now, in the friendliest way pos- 
sible, we should like to take leave of our readers 
for a little time. 





TheDance"byP. C.Q. 



197 



INDEX 



ABC, 188, 189 
Acheul, S., 22, 30 
Acheulean man, 70 
Aeolian deposit, 31 
Altamira, 141, 143, 154 
Arrows, 130, 157 
Artists, 137, 177 
Aurignacian drawing, 141 
Aurignacian man, 31, 125 
Australians, 76, 105, 114-121 
Axes, 110 

Azilian painted stones, 186 
Azilians, 182, 186 



B 



Barter, 84, 100, 115, 187 

Boats and canoes, 82, 113, 190 

Bodkin, 130 

Bolas, 101 

Bone and ivory, 130, 153, 158 

Boucher, 62, 70, 76, 100 

Boucher de Perthes, M., 22, 54 

Bow-drill, 133, 165 

Bracelet, 147 

Brachycephalic skull, 48, 185 

Break-wind, 68, 113 

Brushes 174 

Burials, 84, 121, 126, 157, 182, 185 

Burin, 130 

Bushmen, 129 



Caddington, 30, 32, 33, 47 
Cannibalism, 102, 116 
Cave-dwellers, 92-124 
Caves, 143, 169 
Cephalic index, 48 



Chancelade, 157 

Chapelle aux Saints, I^a, 95 

Chapelle aux Saints, La, man, 95, 

96 
Chellean implements, 26, 31 
Chellean man, 61-70 
Chelles, 62 
Cicatrization, 77 
Clay, banded, 21 
Clay, boulder, 17 
Combe Capelle, 126 
Cooking, 60, 116, 170 
Corral, 134 
Coup de poing, 54 
Cresswell Caves, 57 
Cresswell Crags, 148, 154 
Cr6-Magnon man, 95, 125-129 
Cymotrichi, 105 



D 



Dagger, 177 

Dancing, 148 

Darwin, 36 

Deer, 137 

Derm, 31, 73 

Digging-sticks, 116, 173 

Dinosaurs, 18 

Dogs, 192, 193 

Dolichocephalic skull, 48. 129. 157, 

185 
Drumlins, 17 



E 



Earth's axis, 12 

Elephas antiquus, 26, 31, 34, 49, 

57, 67, 73 
Elephas meridionalis, 49, 57 
Elephas primigenius (Mammoth), 

73, 74 



199 



Index 



Elephas sienois, 57 
Engraving, 141, 177 
Eoliths, 41, 44, 47, 53, 141 
Equinoxes, precession, 12 
Ergeron, 31, 99 
Eskimos, 157. 161. 164, 165 



F 



Fire making, 53, 61, 113 

Fishing, 114, 158 

Flint, 50-54, 100 

Food. 58, 81, 89, 116. 134, 142, 173, 

190 
Fossils, 5, 6 
Frere, John, 17 
Fuegians, 38. 67-69 



Galley Hill, 62 

Galley Hill man, 62 

Games, 120, 165 

Gauchos, 58, 101, 113 

Glacial Period, 1st, 21; 2d, 21; 

3d, 21; 4th, 21 
Glaciers, 13-18, 24 
Grimaldi man, 126 
Grinding, 116 
Grotte des Enfants, 126 

H 

Hafting, 110 

Hand-axe, 54, 62, 70 

Harpoons. 114, 161, 163, 164, 177 

Harpoon-throwers, 164 

Hastings, 182 

Hippopotamus, 57 

Horse, 57, 134 

Huts, 68, 113, 129, 166, 169 



Ice Ages, 8; causes of, 8 
Implements, flint, 22, 23, 25-27, 

31. 41-43, 50-54, 62, 70, 90, 100. 

110. 130, 151-152 
Initiation, 120 
Interglacial Period, 1st, 21; 2d 21, 

26; 3d, 21 
Isthmus, 28, 43, 66, 76, 82, 193 
Ivinghoe Beacon, 134, 147 



Java sub-man, 38-47, 77, 82 



K 

Kayak, 115, 162, 164. 165 
Kent's Hole, 57, 154 
Knives, 109 
Krapina, 102 



Lacustrine, 29 
Lamps, 142, 169, 170 
Laugerie-Basse, 154, 187 
Leonardo da Vinci, 3 
Levallois flakes, 101 
Lissotrichi, 105 
Loess, 29, 30, 31, 99 



M 



Man, Chancelade, 157 

Combe Capelle, 126 

Cr6-Magnon, 125, 129, 154 

Galley Hill. 62 

Grimaldi, 126 

La Chapelle aux Saints, 95, 96 

Magdalenian, 153. 181 

Neanderthal, 96 

Ofnet, 182, 185 

Piltdown, 43-50 

Pithecanthropus, 37-41, 43 

Solutrean, 148-153 
Madeleine, La, 95, 153, 169 
Magdalenian painting, 174 
Magic, 120, 123 
Mammoth, 73, 153 
Mas d'Azil, 182, 186 
Mesaticephalic skull, 48 
Message sticks, 115 
Micoque. La, 95 
Moraine girdle, 17, 34 
Moraines, 14, 17 
Mousterian implements, 31 
Mousterian man, 92, 95-116, 123 
Moustier. Le, 92, 95 
Musk ox, 102 
Mutilation, 144 



200 



Index 



N 

Neanderthal, 96 
Neanderthal man, 96 
Necklace, 77, 110, 147 
Needles, 130, 151-153, 165 



O 



Oban, 182, 189 
Ofnet cave, 182 
Ofnet man, 182 



Paints, 174 

Paviland Cave, 126, 147, 148 

Picks, 110 

Piltdown, 44 

Piltdown man, 43-50 

Pitfall, 57, 67 

Pluvial deposit, 31 

Post-Glacial Period, 21 



R 



Rafts, 82, 83, 117, 191 

Reindeer, 102, 134, 153 

Rhinoceros, 57, 73, 74 

River drift period, 13, 22 

River terraces, 18, 22 

Rivers, 27, 28 

Roches moutonnSes, 14, 17 

Rope making and spinning, 84, 

117 
Rostro-carinate (flint implement). 



Sahara, 29 
Schotter fields, 17 
Scraper, 70, 130, 152 



Sculptors, 142 

Section across England, 7 

Sevenoaks, 182 

Shaft-straightening, 130 

Shields, 109 

Smith, William, 4, 5, 33 

Solutre, 148 

Solutrean flints, 151 

Solutrean man, 148-153 

Somme, 22, 23, 70 

Spear, 54, 67, 77-81, 83, 101, 161 

Spear- thro wing, 106 

Spokeshave, 130 

Steno, 4 

Stratified rocks, 6-7 

Strepy, 54 

Strepyan implements, 24, 25, 26, 54 

Strepyan man, 26, 54 



Tasmanians, 68, 75, 76, 81-85, 117 
Tents, 166, 169 
Thames, river, 27, 28 
Tiger, sabre-toothed, 34, 57 
Totemism, 119, 143 
Trackways, 29 
Tribal customs, 86, 89, 119 
Trinil, 38 



U 



Ulotrichi, 105 
Umiak, 115, 165 



W 



Wey, river, 27 
Wolf's fang, 147 



Yam-stick, 116 



eoi 



i 



The Outline of Science 

Edited by Prof. J. ARTHUR THOMSON 

4 vols, Royal Octavo. Nearly 1000 Illustrations 
Including 40 Large Plates in Color 



The wonderful story of effort, of advancement, of 
accomplishment, and of the evolution of the sciences of 
today from the earlier conceptions and theories of our 
ancestors, told in plain language, free from technical 
terms. 

Here is the story of the progress of Science, of re- 
sults obtained, conclusions drawn, and facts verified, 
by the most eminent students in all branches of science. 
These writers have sought to open up their various sub- 
jects, as one might on a walk with a friend, and have 
succeeded so admirably that the work might be termed 
Informal Introductions to the Various Departments of 
Knowledge. 

The Editor needs no introduction to Scientific Cir- 
cles, and no writer of today is capable of a greater gift 
of luminous expression — always vividly alive, illustra- 
tive, and suggestive. 

In The Outline of Science^ the advance and amazing 
developments of modern science are set clearly and in 
simply expressed language before the vast non-scientific 
public. 



New York G. P, Putnam's Sons London 



The 

A B C of Evolution 

By 

Joseph McCabe 



A book that tells the meaning of 
Evolution, and the actual story of 
the evolution of things, in very 
simple and attractive language. 
Packed with scientific knowledge, 
but quite free from difficult 
scientific terms. Tells you about 
everything, from Einstein to the 
Brontosaur, from the stars to the 
laws of social development, yet a 
child may read it with pleasure. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



\ 



MAR 1959 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS % 






